INTRODUCTION
Putting a new wine in an old bottle will destroy the bottle.
New creature needs a new mind
Religion killed Jesus, but He resurrected to kill religion. My advice: Don’t die with religion.
God is saying that the game on the pulpit is about to change. Pulpit is changing. From a corner in a Church building to your house, your office, inside the bus, at the petrol station. Everywhere you find yourself.
Because one man practicing Christianity is better than 50 men preaching it.
In the book of Genesis we see that God placed Adam in the garden to WORK IT and take care of it. We were made to work. As Christians we have a mission that our Lord expects us to accomplish in the here and now.
Far too many evangelical Christians today see their salvation as simply a “bus ticket to heaven.” They believe it doesn’t matter what they do while they “wait for the bus.” The Parable of the Talents teaches us what we are supposed to do while we await the return of our King.
God wants the kingdom of heaven to come on earth. That is why Jesus says we should pray like this in Matt. 6:9-10. “He never prayed for you to go to heaven, he prayed for heaven to come to you”.
One of the great mistakes of the church is that it has reversed the programme of God. It preoccupies itself with training people to leave earth when in fact the instruction was to OCCUPY until He comes.
We are to work, using our talents to glorify God, serve the common good, and further God’s kingdom. Biblical success is working diligently in the here and now using all the talents God has given us to produce the return expected by the Master.
The title of my massage is TRADING.
Text: MATTHEW 25:15 - 28
Trading: This implies giving something in exchange of another thing.
In trading we need to understand Assets, Liabilities and Time.
We all came into life with assets and liabilities.
Assets are those things and increase your power
Liabilities are those thing that reduce your power.
Everyday consciously or unconsciously, we TRADE.
Ideally, in trading, you should always ensure that your assets is always higher than your liabilities. That is to say, when you trade, you should increase your assets and reduce your liabilities. Else your balance sheet will enter into deficit. This can be a situation where your bad habits are greater than your good habits, what makes you cry and greater than what makes you sad. Etc. at that point you will have little or nothing to trade in life for.
The currency of trading here is TIME. Just as money.
Your assets are your strengths and your weaknesses are your Liabilities.
Your must therefore identify your strengths and your weaknesses before you start trading.
There are things we received originally in life, things that life gives to us, things we do not have power over. Like;
- Parentage
- Relatives
- Temperaments
- Inherent behaviors
- Family background…etc
These things we receive originally in life, some of them will be assets and some of them liabilities.
This is what you trade with.
For instance, if you naturally talk too much (a trait you probably got from your mother), by trading with time, you can use that to build a career in Public speaking, News casting, etc. Here, what seems like a weakness before has turned to something great, by trading.
Whether you know it or not every day of your life you are trading. Right here you are seated, you are trading your time for this knowledge (assets) which will eventually result into something great in the future.
The Parable of the Talents is not about salvation or works of righteousness, but about how we use our work to fulfill our earthly callings. It is about a whole-life stewardship.
Let’s analyze the parable of the talents in the following 7 principles as outlines by Dr. Mensa Otabil in his book “the value of the dot”
1. We do not determine what we receive originally in life.
2. All of us do not start at the same level in life
the master gives to each servant talents, “…each according to his ability.” The master understood that the one-talent servant was not capable of producing as much as the five-talent servant.
We want to protest this as unfair. But there is equality found in the Parable of the Talents. It comes from the fact that they were judged with only what they were given.
The master in this parable is not only wealthy; he is also wise. He knew that his servants did not have equal ability. Likewise, God never gives to us more than we can handle. He knows our strengths and He knows our weaknesses. However, he knows we can always increase when we trade.
Because we do not start at the same level in life, you must learn to run at your pace.
“Do not run at the same pace with other unless you know what is chasing them.”
3. Every place in life is a place of beginning.
Start from where you are, the third servant left where he is but was busy comparing himself with the one they gave five. Stop analyzing the so many things another person can do, starting with the one thing you can do.
4. Success is not determined by what you received originally in life.
Jesus, was born in a manger, but ended up becoming our Lord and Saviour.
5. You can change the value of what you received originally in life by trading.
Only trading can increase what you received originally in life. This means that whether you start with so much in life is inconsequential without trading, because you will keep reducing until you have very little to trade in life for. In the other hand. If you start with very little just know that it will increase, just keep trading.
6. We work for the Master, not our own selfish purposes.
We are told that to each one of the servants the money was given according to his ability. The ability belonged to the servants; but the money belonged to the master. This is the master’s money.
A story was told about an elderly woman who had just finished shopping and returned to her car. She found four men inside. She dropped her shopping bags and drew a handgun. She pointed the gun toward the men and screamed for them to get out of her car. They flew out of there like crazy. Somewhat shaken, she put her gun away, picked up her bags, and got into the front seat. But for some reason the key would not fit the ignition. Then it dawned on her; this was not her car. Her car was in the next row. So she found her car and drove down to the police station to turn herself in. As she told her story the officer behind the desk who was about ready to fall out of his chair laughing pointed her to another desk where four men were reporting a carjacking by a little old woman with a handgun.
She thought it was her car, but it really belonged to someone else. We think what we have is ours – we earned it, we worked for it, it’s ours. Except that it isn’t. It’s God’s. All of it. We have been entrusted with it to put it to use for God’s good purpose in the world.
Remember, this is a parable taught by Jesus to his disciples. To accept the call to discipleship is to accept responsibility to use whatever we have in the interest of God’s kingdom. To accept the call to discipleship is to accept the reality that it all belongs to God. We have been given resources of money, ability, and time and entrusted with the responsibility to use these resources for the good of God’s kingdom, for the good of our sisters and brothers and the good of society.
7. There is good reward for a good trader.
ATTITUDE OF THE THIRD SERVANT.
Servant number three was given only one talent to invest. We’re told in verse 18 that upon receiving his talent, he “went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord’s money.” Now at first glance, this doesn’t appear to be such a terrible thing to do. His master told him to look after one talent and so that’s what he did. He buried the talent for safekeeping. In those days, it was common to hide some of your money in case some invading army conquered the land and took over the banking system.
So this third servant perhaps said to himself, “I’m going to keep my master’s money safe and sound by digging a hole and burying the talent—it might get a little muddy, but at least it wouldn’t be stolen.”
But what did the master think of this servant’s logic when he returned? He was not impressed at all. We’re told at the end of the parable that not only was he fired from his job, but the master ordered that he be thrown “into the outer darkness,” a place where there would be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
It’s scary to admit this, but did you know that many of us are just like that poor one-talent servant? Many of us don’t make the most of what we’ve been given. And because we don’t make the most of what we’ve got, even the little we have will one day be taken away.
Lets look at the behavior and attitudes that characterized this third servant and caused him to displease his master so much.
The Fear of Failure
Upon the master’s return to ask his servants for an accounting, the third servant tries to justify himself, saying in verse 24 of our text that he knew his master to be a “hard man.” And then in verse 25 he says that he was “afraid,” and therefore went and hid his master’s talent in the ground. So we see that the first thing that characterized this third servant and that caused his master’s displeasure was fear.
He buried his talent because he was afraid—afraid that if he took the talent and invested it, he might risk losing it all and then have nothing to return to his master. For fear of losing everything, he did nothing.
Fear is probably the most powerful enemy of success. So many people miss opportunities to do something significant with their gifts or talents or possessions simply because they fear failure. You may have been blessed with a natural ability to sing, but much of this talent has gone to waste because you fear you’d go to pieces once you stepped on the stage. What a tragic thing it will be if you bury your God-given talent.
Some of you have been given a naturally warm and loving personality. Yet you’ve never allowed yourself to get close to anyone because of the fear of rejection. And so you’ve buried a treasure. It’s buried so deep that most people don’t even know that you have it. Instead of warmth and love, they see you as cold or shy. Only you know that deep down inside there is something in your possession of great worth.
Some of you have been given a marvelous gift of communication. But because you think that you might say the wrong thing, you freeze up, you lock your lips, and you’re paralyzed because of fear.
How many of us, because we fear to step out and invest the gifts and abilities God has given us, are missing opportunities to use and develop our talents to their full potential? We leave the treasure lying buried in the dirt.
That’s the first characteristic of the third servant: He was paralyzed by the fear of failure. Now let me mention a second characteristic: laziness.
Laziness
When the master returned to settle accounts, he indicated what he thought of that servant’s decision to bury his talent. In verse 26 the master called him a “wicked and lazy servant!”
It probably took servant number three all of five minutes to dig a hole and bury the talent. He saved himself all the time and energy needed to think through all the investment options that were available to him. He couldn’t be bothered researching the possibility of buying a house or a piece of land at a bargain price and finding good tenants. Nor did he even have enough ambition to make a trip to the bank and take the time to decide on whether to invest the talent in a daily-interest shekel account, or a fixed-interest foreign-currency account, or whatever. This man was just plain lazy.
The Bible has a lot to say about lazy people. Proverbs 10:4,5 declares: 4 “He who has a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. 5 He who gathers in summer is a wise son; he who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame.” Proverbs 20:13 advises, “Do not love sleep, lest you come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will be satisfied with bread.” And I love this line from Ecclesiastes 10:18, “Because of laziness the building decays, and through idleness of hands the house leaks.”
We can be lazy at school or work. And we may be too lazy to pray for other each day.
We may be paralyzed by a fear of failure, or we may be lazy, or both. Now I want to make a third point: There are serious consequences for a person who doesn’t make the most of what he’s got.
1. Losing What You Have Been Given
The first consequence of fear and laziness for servant number three was the loss of even the one talent that had been entrusted to him. When his master returned and found that the servant had been negligent and had buried his talent, he was angry. He said in verse 28 that the talent should be taken from him and given to the servant who had 10 talents. Now in this parable Christ is not justifying taking from the poor and giving to the rich (a kind of Robin Hood principle in reverse). What Christ is doing is teaching a simple principle of life: If you don’t use it, you will lose it.
This principle has been proved in my own life. Many years ago I played the keyboard. I practiced hard. I developed a talent. But if you were to hand me a Keyboard right now and I were to try and play it for you, you would plug your ears! I can’t play the keyboard today. Why? Because I haven’t used my talent.
That’s what can easily happen to buried talents. The third servant not only didn’t achieve a profit on his master’s money; he even lost the one talent he was given to manage. This fearful and lazy manager had dug a hole, little realizing that he was digging it for himself! He didn’t realize that if he didn’t use it, he’d lose it.
Sometimes we wonder why others seem to succeed but we don’t. Maybe it’s because we are not using the talents that God has given us.
2. Future Everlasting Darkness
If losing the only talent he had was not enough, then the third servant heard his master call him an “unprofitable servant” in verse 30, and order that he be cast “into the outer darkness,” where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Here was the second consequence of his failure to make the most of what he had.
What could Christ possibly mean by these harsh words? Remember, we learned in verse 19 that the master returned to settle accounts with his managers “after a long time.” This speaks to us of Christs’ own return. Yes, it’s been almost two thousand years and He hasn’t returned yet. But this “long time” will come to a close. And one of the reasons He is returning is to settle accounts. Paul warns us in 2 Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” Christ will look for a profit on his investment.
I will use the life of two gentlemen in the bible to show this; SAMSON AND DAVID
Let’s look at the life of Samson. Judges 13 – 16. Samson started off as a king, he had an interesting childhood with everything going for him. In fact, he knew what he supposed to do on earth even before he was born. He had great strength and wisdom, and a weakness – women.
With all this Samson started the trading of his life. Everything the lord said don’t do, he did. He traded his assets for liabilities –wrong trading, and he eventually died with his enemies.
He started as a king and ended up in the gutter.
David on the other hand was born poor in a family of so many boys, he was the last born, and usually sent to tend the sheep. When you are a shepherd boy, you have a lot of TIME. He traded with time. He developed the skill of throwing stones, he did so much that he became a sharp stone thrower. A lion came to attack his sheep, he used a stone and killed it, a bear came, he used a stone and killed, he finally used this skill to kill Goliath and liberated his whole country. Throwing stones seems like a little skill yet it made him the greatest.
You can never know the value of that smallest gift you need to add skill to in life until opportunity present itself.
“what is the value of throwing stones?”
Samson killed the lion with natural strength, David killed the loin with stones (skill he go through trading his time). Killing is killing….all I know is both of them killed a loin.
Therefore that someone came into life with so much advantage is so inconsequential, because everything changes by TRADING.
To conclude, I don’t know about you, but I want to be most like the first servant, not the last one. It says in the parable in verse 16 that the one “who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents.” In another Bible version, we read that this man “went at once.”
One thing that set this servant apart from the third servant was his faith. And there were two things that showed that he had faith. First of all, he took a certain measure of risk. He could easily have taken the safe route and buried his talents too. But instead, he took his money and invested it.
Another indication that this was a man of faith was the fact that he “went at once.” Alexander the Great, when asked how he had conquered the world, replied, “By not delaying.” This servant didn’t waste any time in investing his master’s money—he didn’t want to lose even a day’s interest on that money, so he “went at once.” He wasn’t fearful or lazy, but he believed so strongly that he could make a profit with his master’s money that he “went at once.”
It’s no accident that I’m sharing this message with you. God planned this encounter; He wanted you to receive this message.
