The Major League Baseball season ended a month ago with the firing of a dozen managers and coaches. With the poor season the Edmonton Eskimos had this year and the tough one the Oilers are going through right now, one wonders how long before the head coaches of those teams get canned? Why are there so many firings in professional sports? Professional sport is a serious business, that’s why. If you win, you don’t just get a trophy, you receive millions of dollars. If you lose consistently, you forfeit more than pride; you lose your investment as ticket sales plummet. Since professional sport is a serious business, coaches and managers are expected to produce winning teams and if they don’t, they’ll be replaced.
Of course that’s not news to you. What may be news is that, according to Jesus, Christianity is a serious business. Through the Parable of the Ten Minas we learn that the gospel is every Christian’s tool and trade; our heavenly employer expects results; and faithful workers will receive a reward of grace while the disobedient will be punished severely.
Jesus told the Parable of the Ten Minas to a crowd of well-wishers as he began his march to Jerusalem from Zacchaeus’ house in Jericho. Many thought Jesus was going to the holy city to kick the Romans out and they wanted to be in on the excitement. Of course Jesus wasn’t going to Jerusalem to roughhouse the Romans. He was going there to open heaven’s door to all by dying on the cross and coming back to life. After that he would visibly, though not physically, leave this world until his reappearance on Judgment Day. To illustrate the truth that Judgment Day wasn’t going to happen immediately with his arrival into Jerusalem, and to teach us his followers what we are to be doing while we await his return, Jesus told the Parable of the Ten Minas.
In this parable a man of noble birth went away to be crowned king. Before he left, however, he called ten of his servants and gave them each one mina, roughly three months wages. He told the servants to put that money to work while he was gone. The nobleman was crowned king over the protests of the people from his home country and then he returned to see what his servants had done with his money.
It’s not difficult to see that the nobleman in the parable represents Jesus. He came into this world to become king, yet not everyone wants him as king. Those people in the parable represent outright unbelievers. What will happen to them? In the end they will be punished severely in the eternal fires of hell. But that’s not the part of the parable I want to focus on this morning. The fact that you are here in church probably means that you aren’t among those who say outright: “Jesus, I don’t want you as my king.”
But you are a character in this parable. You are among the servants to whom the master entrusted a mina. What does the mina represent? It could represent the money, time, and talents Jesus has given us. Jesus certainly had those things in mind when he told The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14 ff.) about a week later. The minas of this parable, however, best represent God’s Word (compare what Jesus says in Luke 19:26 with Luke 8:18). Jesus has entrusted that Word to each of us and we are to “do business” with it. There are two basic ways in which we do business with God’s Word: we share it with others, and we apply it to ourselves so that we produce fruits of faith, that is, good works to say thank you to Jesus for his forgiveness. How serious is our heavenly employer about each of us doing business with his Word? Let’s find out.
When the master in the parable returned he called his servants together to see what they had done with the minas. The master expected results and so does Jesus. Sharing the Word with others and applying it to ourselves so that we grow in Christian living isn’t something we do “if we have the time or interest.” It’s something we will do if we are true believers. So how did the servants in the parable fare? Well the first servant said: “Sir, your mina has earned ten more” (Luke 19:16a). This servant had been wildly successful with the mina entrusted to him. He had realized a return of a 1,000%! Yet did you hear the humility in the man’s words? He did not say: “Sir, look at what I did with your money.” but “Sir, your mina has earned ten more” (Luke 19:16a). A true believer, therefore, is not only active in sharing and applying God’s Word; he acknowledges that any “success” is a result of God’s blessing. Take Martin Luther, for example. Thanks to that monk’s faithfulness to the Word, churches all over the world (a return of a 1,000%?) now proclaim again the truth that we are saved by God’s grace alone, through faith alone. Yet in the spirit of the first servant Luther said: “I’ve done nothing. The Word did it all.”
But now what are we to think of the second servant who only produced five minas? Had he not been as faithful as the first servant? Some Bible students think that is the case but had he not been faithful, the master would not have given him one city to govern, much less five. The second servant, then, may best illustrate the reality that one’s productivity with the Word is not indicative of one’s faithfulness. Take the prophet Jeremiah for example. He faithfully ministered to the Israelites but there were few who listened to his message. If Jeremiah had been a servant in the parable, he may have only had one or two minas to offer his master. The problem, however, wasn’t Jeremiah; the problem was his listeners who stubbornly ignored Jeremiah’s calls to repentance, just as God told Jeremiah they would (Jeremiah 1:19).
I find that oddly comforting especially when I read about seminary classmates whose congregations have doubled in membership over the last eight years while membership here has actually declined. Have I not been as faithful in sharing the Word as my classmates? Oh I confess that I have not taken advantage of every opportunity to share the Word and there is no excuse for this. But share the Word I’ve done, not just in sermons and Bible classes but in every day conversations. Could it be that ministry here is just much more the ministry of Jeremiah than the ministry of the Apostle Paul who seemed to start a church in just about every town in which he set foot? I don’t know. I won’t know until Judgment Day. Until then I have been entrusted with the Word and will redouble my efforts to do business with it. And I pray that you join me in these efforts, for the Word has been entrusted to you too – not just for sharing with others but to for applying to oneself so that through the crushing weight of the law and the empowering sweetness of the gospel we become more and more like Christ - patient, caring, bold in rebuking sin, servant-like.
What will happen if we don’t faithfully use the Word entrusted to us? Let’s meet the one servant in the parable who didn’t used his mina. That servant said: “Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. 21 I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow” (Luke 19:20, 21). “I didn’t put your mina to work, Sir, because you paralyze me with fear!” That was the servant’s excuse for lamely covering the entrusted treasure with the cloth he should have been using to wipe sweat off his brow from the work of investing that mina. Anyway this servant’s excuse didn’t make sense. If the foreman tells you to dig a ditch, you don’t lean on your shovel all afternoon and then claim you were too afraid of the foreman to do what he asked. No, you dig, or you’ll have a reason to be afraid of the foreman. And so if this servant had really feared his master he would have put the mina to work, even if that only meant depositing it in the bank!
It’s clear that this servant had an attitude problem. He was really no different than those people in the parable who didn’t want the master as their king. At least they were honest enough to admit it. What about us? Do we claim Jesus as our King but fail to acknowledge that with the way we use the Word? I mean we’re happy to have Jesus as our Saviour, just like we’re happy to have the RCMP officer come to our rescue when stranded on the highway in –30 C weather, but when that same officer stands on the highway the next day aiming his radar gun at our speeding vehicle, we curse him even though he’s only trying to keep us safe. Is that the way we treat Jesus? We say things like “I’m glad you died for me, Jesus, but don’t tell me how to live my life. I’ll watch the movies I want to watch. I’ll believe what I want to believe from the Bible. I’ll make worship and giving a priority when I’m ready. In the meanwhile don’t bother me with your demands of total obedience!” The reality, my Friends, is that if we don’t want Jesus as our King, then we won’t enjoy him as our Saviour.
Sure, Jesus demands total obedience but it’s not to show us whose boss, the way a boarder officer might make you unpack your car just to show you he has the power to make you do this. Jesus demands total obedience because he loves us. That’s illustrated in the parable. The master entrusted his money to his lowly servants because he wanted them to share in the joy of ruling with him! Friends, when we fail to see that God entrusts his Word to us so that we may one day rule with him in eternity, then God’s Word will seem like a burden, home devotions time wasted, worship services a bore, Sunday School prep and confirmation homework an interference, and we will shove God’s Word into the corner of our life! But put God’s Word on the shelf at your peril for the master said to the wicked servant: “I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? 23 Why then didn’t you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?’ 24 “Then he said to those standing by, ‘Take his mina away from him and give it to the one who has ten minas…I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away” (Luke 19:22-24, 26).
God will not be mocked. We dare not sing with gusto: “God’s Word is our great heritage” but then treat the Word like a family heirloom collecting dust in the china cabinet. Such a faith is a sham, and the eternal life we thought we had will be replaced with eternal judgment. That’s what Jesus meant when he said: “… as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away” (Luke 19:26b). Yes, Christianity is a serious business. Why? Because God’s love for us is serious. The Father didn’t spill his Son’s blood for us to trample but to savour and share.
So is there hope for us, we, who have shown disdain for the treasure of the Word? Yes, there is hope because it was for wicked servants like us that Jesus marched on Jerusalem – not to kick the Romans out but to kick our sins to pieces until the Father could see them no more. This, Jesus accomplished at the cross. This, the Father declared to be true with the resurrection. And this, the Holy Spirit has brought us to believe through the Word – that precious gift entrusted to us. So get on with it. Your master has work for you to do. Savour the Word. Share the Word. Do this faithfully and someday Jesus will say to you: “Well done, my good servant! Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities” (Luke 19:17). Amen.
