Use What God Has Given

Matt 25:14-30 - USE WHAT GOD HAS GIVEN

Jesus has been telling His disciples, and all of us today, of the signs of the end times and that after He left, He would return.

• As to the day and time of His return, no one knows except God the Father.

• But His second coming is sure and we are to prepare for it. He will come back.

What will happen when He comes back? He said it in Matt 25:31.

• 25:31“When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.

• 25:32 Before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

• He will identify those who believe Him and those who don’t. He will receive “the righteous into eternal life”. 25:46

So between now and then, what are we supposed to do?

• Jesus shared TWO PARABLES to tell us how we ought to prepare for His return.

The first one is the Parable of the Ten Virgins. We are to be ready and prepared to see Him, even if the wait is long. He can come at a time when we do not expect.

• The wise ones will not only prepare their lamps but take extra oil with them, just in case the wait is long and the oil runs out (25:4).

• The question we need to ask is, are we ready to see Jesus? Do you know Jesus today? Are you prepared to face Him?

Jesus then went on to tell the SECOND parable, the Parable of the Talents. That’s what we read today. It tells us what we ought to be doing between NOW and His RETURN.

• We are not to wait passively and do nothing. God expects us to serve Him with what He has given us.

• The focus of the second parable is not on the timing of His return but on the things we do as we wait.

• Because when He returns, we are to give an accounting of what we have done or not done with the things He has given us.

• And that includes the Gospel that He has entrusted into our hands.

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The story is simple. A master leaves on a journey and entrusts his wealth to his servants.

• He divides them among his THREE servants, not equally but according to their abilities.

• The first one got 5 talents, the second 2, and the third one, just 1 talent.

In the Roman world then, a talent was about 6,000 denarii.

• A denarius is a day's wage for a labourer, so a talent is worth 6000 days' of wage; that’s 16 years' wage for a labourer.

• So these are very large amounts, not small. In today’s value, one talent can be worth at least half a million dollars.

You can imagine how much is lost if you bury that in the ground for a long time.

• The expectation was clear. Any good servant would know to use this money and earn something in return for his master.

• Which was what the first two servants did. They went “at once and traded with them”.25:16 This was the most sensible thing to do.

But not the third servant, who buried the money in the ground and did nothing.

• The comment the master gave him revealed his expectations and the missed opportunity.

• 25:27“You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest.”

The longer the master was away, the more interest he would have earned. And the master did go away for a long time (25:19).

• And now, the “one talent” would not even be worth one talent because of inflation.

• After digging it up, the servant would not be returning exactly “one talent” to his master, because the value has depreciated.

• The parable tells us of a great loss of earnings and opportunity.

The master was disappointed. He called him the “wicked and slothful servant” who did not love his master and did nothing for him.

• The servant gave a lame excuse and “blamed” his master for his own conduct.

• 25:24b-25 24…“Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.”

• “You are such a harsh and demanding man and you expect a lot while you do no work, and so I am afraid and decided not to take the risk.”