Series: Destinations on the Journey of Faith
Extreme Adventure
Matt 25:14-30
14 “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. 15 To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. 16 The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. 17 So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. 18 But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
19 “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. 20 The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’
21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
22 “The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’
23 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
24 “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’
26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
28 “ ‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. 29 For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
ILLUST: One of the best stories told at a missionary conference in Shanghai was of a man who said he was afraid he was going to be of no use in the world because he had only one talent. “Oh, that need not discourage you,” said his pastor. “What is your talent?” “The talent of criticism.” “Well, I Advice you,” said his pastor, “to do with it what the man of one talent did with his. Criticism may be useful when mixed with other talents, but those whose only activity is to criticize the workers might as well be buried, talent and all.”
Paul Lee Tan, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations: Signs of the Times (Garland, TX: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996), 293.
Intro: We all have talents and God expects us to use them for the good of the kingdom…
As we go on this Journey of faith we have experienced an awe inspired start followed by a stop at the museum of knowledge where we focused completely on ourselves and gained as much knowledge as we could…now we are about to pull into the destination of excitement.
Leslie and I renting horses in the mountains…hers wouldn’t go mine wanted to run where ever he wanted to go…
In any case this stop is the one of activity…this is the doing stage of our spiritual journey of faith…
We spent all this time at the previous stop learning and being trained now we are going to put it into practice…we know that as we work for the Lord that we are being fed…but sometimes this transition is scary and we feel pushed into action…like the time some friends pushed me into bungie jumping…I certainly wasn’t ready for that one…
I. What does this destination look like?
Once we stop and commit the adventure here in destination 3 we find that it is very rewarding…
Our Uniqueness in the Community
We find that we have this individual talent and gift that we can use to contribute to the community of believers…what happens is we accept these gifts as from God and we want to use them to glorify Him and in a sense to become completely ourselves…
In our scripture for today we find that three workers are given “talents” of silver to do with what they wish while their landowner or boss is gone…Two of these guys took the opportunity and increased their value while the third guy basically just sat in the pews and never put his talent to use…
Because of our Uniqueness of gifts we find that we have…
Responsibility
During this destination we are often put into some form of leadership role or position within the church…
We may have served for years but now we are called to lead....
The opportunities are endless…
Sunday School teacher…Organize an event or VBS…start up a new outreach program like our meals on wheels program or the sweet potato give away…this often means a lot of work and very little recognition but the rewards are eternally grand…
The first event I was ever over was the community back to school bash…$10000.00 budget…inflatables, fireworks, food, games, dunking booth…when it was all finished and we were packing up and cleaning up it felt like all the planning and effort was well worth it…I felt valuable and the community felt blessed…
We grow in our faith with each successful use of our gifts…
There are so many different gifts that each individual has…not everyone is called to be a preacher or a leader…some are called to be helpers
The point is like any adventurous journey there is the
Spiritual Goal To Be Reached.
Paul said in Phil 3:14 he
“pressed on toward to the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”
Just before that verse he said that his main goal was to know Christ and the power of his resurrection…becoming like him in his death.
The ultimate goal of all our service and use of our gifts is so that we will know Jesus in a personal way as we realize that everything we have ever accomplished, no matter how big and admirable they may have been, are of little value compared to the goal of becoming closer to God through our loving service for him…
Stuck at the Amusement Park
We all know that person who never seems to grow up and move past the playing stage…not that playing is bad or that as adults we shouldn’t enjoy the amusement park…but I don’t like the parks for the same reason I used to…
Sometimes we get
Overly Zealous
These people make other nervous with their completely over powering way of pushing their mission on us…they are always telling us their story and trying to win us over to their vision for us spiritually…if they can convert you they feel successful…if you are like this then you are stuck in a place of disappointments…we base our achievements on the productivity of others…
This used to be me…
Often we find ourselves stuck when we become
Weary In Doing Good
Seen the T Shirts “Shop til you drop”
We work hard because of our faith to the point we become burnt out and often fell unappreciated and don’t even know why…
People didn’t change the way we thought they ought to or has soon as we expected…perhaps we feel that our leadership doesn’t result in the breakthrough changes we desired. Usually is boils down to the common complaint that “people disappoint us”…Someone else’s fault…we tried as hard as we can but couldn’t make it happen. So we become disappointed and even bitter…
We find ourselves
Self-Centered
To often we become puffed up and think that we are the reason for any success within the local church community…it is a feeling of indispensability…
“No one could do it better because my gifts and abilities are so perfect.”
These people are devastated if they are not chosen to lead the charge for obvious assignments…they relies on the accolades and the feelings of others rallying around them…
Because if this we live…
Life As Performance
This is dangerous as we the more we portray ourselves as the gifted one that can lead through anything the more we are personally challenged to live up to the image we have put out there…that would mean we would appear weak and even out of our own control if we admit our failures and needs…
We look perfect in front of the crowd but inside we are angry with God and fearful that the real us will be found out…
We want to be loved and cared for because of want we have done not for who we are…in the end we are very, very lonely people…
Leaving the Adventure for a New Destination
Lose Sense of Certainty
We are sure of ourselves when we have task to be completed…it makes the goal clear but as we pull away from destination 3 we find that the road to 4 is full of uncertainty and questioning…all too often this happens because of a
Experience of Faith or Personal Crisis
This crisis makes us question everything we knew about God and our faith…this often starts a long, deep, anguishing, questioning of our faith and even our relationship with God…we search for any way to resolve this faith dilemmas
Feel Abandoned
It is here that we have to face the mess of our life and as we look to make sense of it we question our certainty of God and begin to ask where we can turn in this dark place in our life…
Here we feel that God is not present when we need Him the most…while its not always the case…often this darkness sets the stage for the inevitable, humbling, experience of rediscovering God again…
It is here that we must
Look For Direction
Our faith must change before it can be remolded…it is scary because it rocks some of the foundations that we have so relied upon, maybe since childhood…
Here it is helpful to find someone who has already been through this part of journey to help guide and encourage us…to the next destination…you we all travel back and forth from one place in the journey sometimes many different times in one day…the important thing is that we keep on traveling and helping each other along the way…
We must
Let Go Of Success and Accept Being Vulnerable
Stop depending ourselves to make this journey and admit that we are not as capable as we want to appear…God wants us to need him and he is faithful and true when he says he will help us and give us what we need for our faith and our journey if we will only submit to him…
Master wasn’t pleased because of the lack of action in the life of the third servant so he said…
30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
