OPEN: A famous preacher once delivered a powerful sermon on the subject of “God’s Ownership” and – since it spoke of the things we have belonging to God - this made a certain rich member of the church a little upset.
The wealthy man took the preacher to his home for lunch, and then walked him through his elaborate gardens, woodlands, and farm. When the tour was completed, the rich man smiled and said “Now are you going to tell me, that all this land does not belong to me?”
The preacher though about that a moment and asked “Ask me that same question a 100 years from now.”
APPLY: Last week we touched on the fact that everything that we have belongs to Jesus. When we declared that Jesus was our LORD – we were saying He now owns us.
• He owns my bank account
• He owns my home, my car, my family
• He owns the shirt on my back
IT’S ALL HIS!
And God expects me to use those things (which He now owns) for Him.
The parable we read this morning looks at that truth from a slightly different angle:
Jesus said: "A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’” Luke 19:12-13
The point of this parable is this:
When Jesus returned to heaven to become King of Kings and Lord of Lords He left us with something special - a gift that He wanted us to “invest” for Him.
He refers to that gift He gave us as a “mina.”
Now we don’t use “minas” today, but back in the day of Jesus a Mina was a very valuable commodity. It was a form of currency which weighed about 14 ounces and its monetary value equaled approximately 100 days of manual labor.
To put in terms of our present society, a mina would be worth somewhere between $8000 and $10,000.
Now, that’s a fair amount of money.
If someone came up to you and gave you $10,000 and asked you to invest it for him would you be impressed by that?
I would!
In fact, I’d be fairly overwhelmed by fact that person trusted me with so much money.
And that’s the first thing that occurred to me as I read this parable:
Jesus trusts us.
He’s placed a gift of tremendous value into our hands.
This reminded me one of my favorite passages. Ephesians 2:4-10
Look there with me.
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions— it is by grace you have been saved.
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Verse 10 of that passage is the one that really catches my attention. Before you and I became Christians, God prepared “good works” for us to do. JUST FOR US!
ILLUS: Back in Genesis, God created Adam and Eve and placed the entire earth under their dominion. But now that’s a lot of territory to work with so God prepared a special garden for them (Garden of Eden). He made this garden especially for them.
Genesis 2:9 says “And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground — trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food….”
It was literally a paradise on earth… created just for them.
And that’s the image that comes to my mind when Ephesians 2:10 says that we’ve been “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance - for us...”
It’s like He’s created this special garden just for us, and this garden is filled with all kind of “good things” we can do. And what’s really exciting about this is that when we do THOSE good things (things God prepared in advance for us to do) we’ll be doing something of value… something that will last for eternity.
And, when I do those “good things” God prepared in advance for me to do I am giving Him a return on His investment in me. In God’s mind, the “good things” He’s prepared for me to do are worth a great deal.
What He’s given you and I is like a man writing out a check for 1000’s of dollars and then trusting us with investing it wisely.
ILLUS: How many of you have noticed that Wall Street is not necessarily a safe place to invest your money? Of course you have. Millions of people lost a great deal of money over the past few years because the stock market is always a bit of a gamble.
But the beauty of what God has given us is that getting a return on this kind of investment is almost a no-brainer. If we invest what He’s given us – WE WILL get a return on that investment.
If God prepared something for you to do He knows (that if you do it) it’s going to produce a profit for Him.
In fact, back in Isaiah 55, God says that’s the way it works with everything He does:
“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10-11
When God decides to do something - when He invests Himself in a project:
HE WILL achieve what He desires.
HE WILL realize a return on His investment.
In fact, God makes us a promise about doing these ”good things”:
(Don’t) become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9
That’s one of the underlying messages of the parable of the Minas. Everyone who invested what their master had given them had something to show for it.
One obtained 10 times his investment.
Another gained 5 times as much as he invested.
Those who invested their Master’s money reaped a harvest at the proper time.
Even the lazy servant could have gotten a modest return if he’d just put in a bank.
If you gave me a check for $10,000 and I put in a savings account, how much interest would I gain? (2 or 3 percent). That isn’t much, but it’s far better than just burying that money in the ground somewhere.
But wait! What if I mess up? What if I invest in those good works for Jesus and I fail?
I Corinthians 3 tells us:
“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. (I Corinthians 11-13)
If what he has built survives (gold, silver, precious stones), he will receive his reward.
If it is burned up (wood, hay, or straw), he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames. (I Corinthians 3:14-15)
The key thing that God wants us to do with His investment is to use it to build on the foundation of Jesus. Now, I can do all kinds of good works in this world, but if I don’t invest those good deeds in the name of Jesus, they won’t last very long. Their value will be temporary. But everything invested in the name of Jesus will last for eternity… because God adds to their value.
The point of the parable is that God expects us to at least TRY to do SOMETHING for Him.
Try to build on the foundation of Christ with our time, treasure or talent.
But if we don’t try to do something for Him then we’ve essentially told God:
• I don’t want what you’ve given
• I don’t care if you’ve trusted me
• I’d rather just ignore this gift you’ve prepared for me, because I’ve got other things I’d rather do with my life.
Now when I’ve taught people about Ephesians 2:10 - I used to tell them that God had created this wonderful garden of good deeds for us to do - BUT if they didn’t want to do those things they didn’t have to.
I’m going to have to rethink that because in Jesus parable we’re introduced to someone who believed that.
LOOK AGAIN at Luke 19:20-23
"Then another servant came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. 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.’
"His master replied, ‘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? Why then didn’t you put my money on deposit so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?’
Essentially, what this parable telling us is - when Jesus comes back again we don’t want Him finding us doing nothing. We don’t want Him to see that we’ve never gotten our hands dirty.
Bill Hybels once said it this way: “I would never want to reach out someday with a soft, uncallused hand - a hand never dirtied by serving - and shake the nail-pierced hand of Jesus.”
That alone would be embarrassing. But just think how much more embarrassing it would be for Jesus to look us dead in the eye and say
“You wicked servant! - why didn’t you just DO something for me??? I entrusted you with this beautiful paradise of good deeds and you let it go to seed. How dare you treat such a valuable gift with such disdain?”
Now - THAT part of the parable - is a cautionary tale
As Christians we need to realize that Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that we could comfortably sit in padded chairs and pews. He didn’t go thru His trials, and the whippings and the beatings just so we could make sure we get to Pizza Hut before the folks from the church down the street.
One of the reasons Jesus invested His entire life, death, and resurrection was so that
• He could change our lives
• and help us become servants of the most High God
• so that we could actually live lives that amounted to something… for eternity.
But there’s a couple of encouraging lessons that are often overlooked in this parable:
1st –each servant received the same amount of money to invest.
Each of these 10 servants received ONE mina.
Now, there are Christians who look around in church and they think to themselves…
• I can’t sing like that person does
• I can’t teach like some folks do
• I can’t preach like that fellow over there… and on and on and on.
They look at the more visible members of the church and they think… I can’t do what they do!
Allow me to let you in on a secret: it doesn’t matter.
God tells you YOU have been given “good deeds” which He prepared in advance just for you. Your gift is just as precious in His sight as the gift the person next to you has. All our gifts have equal value in the eyes of our master, just as the minas each servant rec’d had equal value.
Romans 12:6-8 tells us
“We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.
• If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.
• If it is serving, let him serve;
• if it is teaching, let him teach;
• if it is encouraging, let him encourage;
• if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously;
• if it is leadership, let him govern diligently;
• if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.”
Each of us has different gifts - different abilities.
God doesn’t elevate one person’s gift above another.
He’s not into comparing us with each other.
He just wants us to use what He’s given us.
As Peter wrote: “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. 1 Peter 4:10
2nd - Not only did God entrust us with this valuable gift of “good deeds” (designed especially 4 us), but He also believed the majority of His servants would actually do what He wanted done.
Notice: Only one of the 10 servants is condemned.
All the rest apparently did what the Master asked
Now I could be reading too much into this part of the parable but I truly believe Jesus watched each one of us as we:
1. Believed in Him
2. Repented of our sins
3. Confessed Him as our Lord and Savior
4. and came up out of the baptistery
I think that He watched us go through that entire process of accepting His free gift of salvation and He thought to Himself –
I believe in this man/woman
I believe they can actually fulfill my will for their lives
I believe that they can make me rejoice that I’ve made my sacrifice for them.
Part of what reinforces this image in my mind is the fact that there are some other folks mentioned in the parable. There were 10 “servants”, but there were a whole bunch of “subjects” who not only didn’t receive a mina to invest – they refused to accept this nobleman as their King.
These are NOT His servants. They are those who should accept Him as Lord… but refused.
Luke 19:14 says “(they) hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’”
Jesus repeatedly taught that the vast majority of this world was NOT going to accept Him as King.
It wasn’t that He didn’t want them.
They just didn’t want Him to rule over them.
Because they’ve rejected Jesus as their King, they seal their doom at the end of time.
But God doesn’t find pleasure in that. In fact as Peter wrote “The Lord… is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9
All that necessary to begin accepting God’s gracious gift of salvation is to accept the fact that you want Him. William Barklay put it this way
"Jesus did not say discuss me; he said follow me."
We do not make terms with Christ; we surrender to Christ.
We do not compromise with Christ; we submit to Christ.
Christianity does not mean being interested in Jesus Christ; it means taking the same oath as princes take to a king or queen in a coronation ceremony and saying,
"I am your liege man of life and limb, and faith and truth will I bear to you against all manner of folk. So help me God."
One of our own previous preachers (John Rigle – 10/08) composed a variation on that pledge:
“I pledge allegiance to the Lamb, the only begotten Son of God.
He is the Messiah, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings.
He is Immanuel, God with us. He is Jesus
He is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent and yet He is in my heart.
He is the Lion and the Lamb.
I pledge allegiance to my Savior, Jesus. The great I AM.”
