The Parable Of The Talents: Well Done Good And Faithful Servant! Series

"Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions... No one can take it from you. It is not something that can be stolen. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. Moreover, you cannot draw on its future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.

You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness -- the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends -- depends on that.

If one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one's whole life indefinitely. We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is."

-Arnold Bennett, Bits & Pieces, March 4, 1993, p. 18-20.

Our Parable today occurs in the book of Matthew in the 25th chapter, just before our parable from last week, the parable of the sheep and the goats. In the chapter 25 as we talked about last week, we’re looking at parables in regard to the final judgment. This parable is no different. We’re being taught by Jesus here, how we should be prepared for his second coming.

At the beginning of the chapter, we see the parable of the ten virgins. Five are wise, and five are unwise, the wise are ready for Christ’s return, the unwise are not. In the parable of the sheep and goats, the sheep have served Jesus faithfully on the Earth by meeting the practical needs of those around them, the goats have not.

And in our parable today, we see servants of a master, some who are wise, and one who is not.

And the question we should each be asking ourselves is, as I make decisions in my life, and exercise my free will, which path am I choosing? Am I choosing the wise path or the dead end path? It all comes down to how we decide to respond to Christ and what he commands us to do and be.

Let’s take a look at our parable, from Matthew chapter 25, verses 14-30. As a side note, this parable also occurs in Luke 19:11–27, in a slightly different form.

The scripture says this: “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip. He called together his servants and entrusted his money to them while he was gone. 15 He gave five bags of silver to one, two bags of silver to another, and one bag of silver to the last—dividing it in proportion to their abilities. He then left on his trip.”

Pause there. I’m reading from the NLT. The NIV renders it as “bags of gold” while the NASB renders it “talents.” I understand why the NIV and NLT are rendering it that way, but I want to consider the word talent. What is a talent? A “talent” or talentan in the Greek, was a unit of measurement for about 80 lbs, and in particular a talent was referencing a weight of 80 lbs of silver. That may be why the NIV renders it silver. But as a unit of currency, it would be referencing an amount of 6,000 denarii. To understand that value, one denarii in the ancient world was equal to one day’s wages. A single talent then, is actually valued at about 20 years of labor. So, say you made 30,000 a year, the amount of 1 talent would be $600,000.

So, it’s apparent what God gives us, is of extreme value. What does he give us? We’ll get there in a minute. But consider the amounts he’s giving, to the first servant, he gave 5 bags of silver, five talents, so if we’re going off our base scale here, 30,000 a year, about 2.5 million dollars.

I also want you to notice that it says he divided in it proportion to their abilities. Very important.

Then it says, “The servant who received the five bags of silver began to invest the money and earned five more. 17 The servant with two bags of silver also went to work and earned two more. 18 But the servant who received the one bag of silver dug a hole in the ground and hid the master’s money."