Parable of the Talents Part 1

Matthew 25:14-23

Good morning, if you would turn with me to Matthew 25, we are going to look at our next parable. The parable of the Talents. A very important parable for all of us to understand when it comes to serving. Because how many of us skip serving and let the flesh win more days than we should? We are born selfish, we grow in selfishness, Satan and his team are right there tempting us. I should go out and fellowship more, serve more, disciple more. But the temptations are there, some days worse than others. They come into my mind saying hey kevin, instead, you could stay in your jammies most of the day and watch the golf channel. I myself was challenged and convicted when studying this parable and if you are a follower of Christ with sinful flesh still like myself, you might feel convicted, like I was, but that’s what the word of God does, it a two-edged sword, driving deep in to the soul, challenging our thoughts and our ways. (I’m just the messenger, I didn’t come up with this). So, let’s go ahead and read the whole parable so we have a good context, then we can start to dive into it here.

Read Matthew 25:14-30

Throughout chapter 24, Christ explains to His disciples about the time He is going to return. At the start of chapter 25, we have an end-time parable describing his return then in Chapter 25:14 we have the parable of the talents, continuing right on with the context of Jesus describing His return to the earth. I wanted to show you that so we can accurately interpret the start of this parable.

Verse 14a (Read) This pictures Christ who is about to go on a journey. Where is He going in reality? He’s going to die, resurrect then ascend back to heaven, for a time. An amount of time that we do not know, no one knows. And this is true in the parable, if someone went on a journey in this time period, they would sometimes have to walk hundreds of miles and you would have no clue when they would be back. It could be months, could be years, but if they did come back, they would just show up one day.

14b. (Read) Christ initially called His Apostles, then other disciples, and more disciples, and more and more people came to know and follow Christ, and Christ gave His possessions over to His church, the body of people who follow Him.

Matthew 25:15 Read

(Slide)Main Point: Every servant receives gifts, each to their own ability.

- Now a talent in the parable here is a measure of weight, usually associated with currency. So, imagine one talent of money is a big sack of coins weighing a certain amount. That’s the imagery Christ is using here. But when we see the word talent, it’s ironic that our English word talent means a special ability that not a lot of people have. Some might be talented in art, music, or singing. Some might be talented in woodwork, math, science, public speaking, or teaching, holding your breath for 4 minutes. There are many talents out there. But that’s not really what we are talking about.

- A talent has a broader sense here. What I want us to visualize from the word “talent” is: in the parable it's currency, but in reality, it can represent everything God has given us. He gives us His possessions so to speak, to be stewards of them.

Everything we have is from God, all of it, our whole existence, our time, money, energy, material possessions, our families, our jobs, our opportunities and our abilities. God is in control of everything and everything we have is from Him and Him alone.

Deuteronomy 10:14 Behold, to Yahweh your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it.

1 Corinthians 10:26 FOR THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S, AS WELL AS ITS FULLNESS.

Everything we have belongs to God and is given to us by God. He hands us His possessions.

We are all different though, and God grants us each a certain number of talents, each to our own ability. How much does one person get? That’s up to God.

God also gives to all people, even unbelievers.

Matthew 5:45 for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

We see this with the 3rd servant with the one talent. He is an unbeliever and is thrown into hell in the end, but the point Jesus is making is this 3rdperson is associating with being a servant. Today we would call this person a self-proclaiming Christian but not truly saved. A self-deceived individual. God gives things to all people, but to those who are not saved but claim the Christian title, they will experience the love of the church, opportunities of service, they will be apart of special things that only the church has, (Wheat and the tares), but God expects we do something with the things He has given us. To be good stewards of them, to desire to use them. And we will see that’s the major difference that gives the non-Christians away, it sort of reveals them. Is the love and desire there?

The things God gives us, all our abilities and opportunities to serve the church, serve the kingdom, which is what God wants us to do with our time, materials, energy that He has granted us while also giving us time to live on this earth. That should be our main goal, not to be selfish with those things, not be selfish with our time, live for ourselves, make a name for ourselves. But to serve the Living God, our Creator, who created us, has blessed us with all things, we are to live a life that glorifies and magnifies Him.

Imagine for a second. We have new missionaries come in here and speak and we want to support them. They are going to go to, idk, India and build churches, spread the gospel, and build God’s kingdom. We say that’s really cool, here’s a lump sum of money, go do that. They go to India. Then a year later, we call them up and say how’s it going over there? How many churches have you planted? How many people have you told the gospel? How is God’s kingdom growing over there?

- And they say, well, we haven’t done any of that. We decided once we got over here to India, that we would just take your money and start a new life for ourselves. We bought a house and now we just live here, not doing anything for the kingdom of God. Thanks for the money though, don’t contact us again. How would we react?

- How would we feel about that?

- Now think of our lives, why are we here, right now, on this earth if we are a true follower of Christ?

- 2 Corinthians 5:20 So then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as God is pleading through us. What is an ambassador? Someone who goes to another country, represents that country, and is there for a purpose, a mission, to represent and say things on behalf of that country. God (sent us) here on a mission. This is not our home. Our home is in heaven.

(Slide)1 Peter 2:9-12 (Find and Read)

- Peter says we are aliens here: sojourners, exiles. We are not to live a life for ourselves. We are missionaries (sent here) for a purpose: to grow the kingdom.

- I see so many Christians, not just in this church but elsewhere, living on this earth in sort of vacation mode. Just going through the motions, day to day, not doing anything to grow themselves or the kingdom. I don’t judge, but it makes me so sad to see that. (See a family member make wrong choices).

- The only reason God does not zap us up into heaven the second we are saved, the reason He leaves us down here is because He wants us to perform, to work for the kingdom, to earn rewards before we go to heaven, so we don’t have to show up empty handed in heaven, we can actually give something back to Jesus.

- Think of your life. Why are you here? How many of us get caught up in just living here? I do, I've been caught up in that. I’ll admit it. It grieves me hard when I do it. How does God feel when we do that? He sent us here to this alien world with gifts and abilities and opportunities, and materials in order to advance His kingdom and we do that mainly by serving His church. That should be our main goal. Go out and make disciples. Are we doing that?

- We can make disciples in a lot of ways: Evangelism: you can’t become a disciple if you don’t hear the gospel. Fellowship, discipling one another, teaching the word, bible studies, if you teach Sunday school, you are discipling kids for Christ.

I want to make it clear that I'm not up here judging anyone. In teaching this parable, my goal is not to stand up here and point fingers, because the people who stand up here are sinful human beings as well and we all stumble at times. Our goal is to come alongside as Christian brothers and encourage you as best we can. I’m sure some of you do a lot of serving and that’s great. There might be some of you who are saved and living a life for yourself and just need a friendly wake-up call. (I don’t know who that is) but this is a loving encouragement, a boost. Listen to the Scriptures and let them transform you, those who have hears, let them hear. That’s what all of us are here for, gentle reminders, encouragement, sometimes loving rebukes. There might be some in here who are not saved, who see this serving thing as non-sense and hopefully that brings them to Christ, because we can’t start to see serving for what it truly is without Christs’ saving grace.

A quick question before I take us to another verse. Answer this question in your mind, don’t raise your hand. Who in here thinks that coming to church on Sunday morning is the best form of worship to God? Church is the end all be all, the only real thing I must fulfill every week in order to be in good standing with God. Let’s see what God’s word has to say about this question. What is the worship that God desires?

Romans 12:1 Paul states very clearly the worship that God wants from us.

- Nothing about going to church. Now church is a good thing, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of Christians and non-Christians have this idea that coming to church IS the Christian life. And I want to help us out of that mentality. Coming to church is good and we encourage it, but it’s only about 5% of your Christian walk. It’s another great thing to do on top of the rest of your activities in your Christian walk.

- Here we see our worship of God is our bodies, our lives, being a living sacrifice. Sacrificing our time, our energy, and our material possessions in order to progress the kingdom of God. That is the worship that God wants from us.

- Jesus is our ultimate example. He was the definition of humility. He didn’t once live a life for Himself. He was a living sacrifice while He was alive. He only thought of glorifying God and the benefit of others, whether they would be believers or not.

Well yea, but that was Jesus, He obviously had a different plan than us.

- ​1 Corinthians 11:1 Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.

o We are all commanded to be imitators of Christ.

- Galatians 2:20 It is no longer I who live but (Christ who lives in me).

James 1:27 (Find and Read)

- Visit orphans and widows in their affliction. Why this phrase? Because in this time, this was the most sacrificial thing a person could do. Because you have to go out of your way and sacrifice time, energy, and money in order to help these people, which at this time were considered the lowest in society. (Ruth)

- Did you know that a group of people at Wildwood Chapel has done a form both of these things just this year? They have built many ramps for widows in our community while giving them the gospel. We had a lady in Nevada who had her kids taken away by child services because her house was in such bad shape. Because of some of the repairs done by some individuals in here to that lady's house, her kids were able to be returned to her, so they didn’t have to be orphans per say.

- So, when we ask you to sacrifice your time to come help with these projects, help with VBS, help with nursery, help with teaching Sunday school or Wednesday nights, it’s not pointing a finger, it’s not judging, no, it's more of a come along, worship God the way He wants to be worshipped.

- Join us in this living sacrifice for God, join us in this pure and undefiled religion. It’s wonderful, it’s serving Christ and His bride, and we just want that for you as well. It makes me sad seeing people hurting their walk with Christ, when I know their relationship, their worship to Christ could be so much better. And I can say that, because I’ve gave into the flesh and neglected my services to the kingdom and I’ve felt the weight of that, the joy is taken from me, and as a brother in Christ, I don’t want anyone to go through that.  

- I know some people have jobs and life occurrences that keep us from serving at certain times and that’s okay. But if you can be there, and you’re not. I just want to encourage you to come, to sacrifice, to serve. Because it’s what God desires in all of us, it’s the sacrifice and the worship He wants from you.  

- Church is good and wonderful but it’s not at the top of the religion or worship that God expects from us.

- And btw, really quick, we have to have a pure heart when doing these things, we have to be saved already and we have to walk by the spirit and do all these things out of love for God and neighbors or else they don’t count.

- Proverbs 15:8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to God. God says you might as well not even do them because they go from pure religion to abominations if there is no love for God or neighbor while doing them.

So, back to the parable in Matthew 25. Let’s look at the two servants, who had the right idea when given abilities and opportunities from God, and what they did with them.

Matthew 25:16-17

(Slide)Main point # 2: We must be busy in our Master’s absence.

- Notice at the beginning of vs. 16: immediately, he went and started acquiring more talents. Vs. 17: “In the same manner” so the one with 2 talents immediately went as well. There was no delay. They didn’t waste the time they had on earth.

- Also, you might see traded the talents, but in the Greek that actually means to put them to work, to increase them.

- So, Christ’s point in this parable is to take what God has given you and to go out into the world and grow or increase what God has given you. To put them to work.

- He uses money here as an analogy, but again, He is talking about everything God has given us, we are to take those things and use them for godly purposes. We don’t have to sacrifice everything, quit our job and become a missionary, that’s not the point, most of us still need to go to work and make money so we can pay a mortgage or a car loan, feed our families, and train our kids. Apostle Paul still made tents as a full-time job on his missionary journey’s to stay afloat. But God wants our hearts.

- (practical applications) This might mean sacrificing being with our kids on a Saturday for a few hours to help build a ramp, to help move furniture for people, to encourage a fellow believer, to go out and give the gospel to a stranger, sacrifice our July 8th – 12th to help with VBS, Sacrifice a Wednesday night to help with the youth at church that night, to help serve in some capacity. (just a few examples)

- If you work Saturdays, you might have to sacrifice a weekday evening or two.

- I know some of us have ailments or life occurrences that take us out for a season of serving and that’s okay too. Newborns, an injury, a disease, but once or if those things go away, we need to get back in the game so to speak.

- Some of us are advanced in years, but we should never retire from serving Christ. It’s a lifelong process. I’m not asking the advanced generation to help move refrigerators on Saturdays. Leave that to the young guys and gals. But there are service opportunities for you as well. I’ve mentioned several already as just examples but there are many more.

- In whatever we are doing, whether serving or working or going to the grocery store, we are all called to bring the gospel to all people and all nations. And we are to start doing it immediately, right when we are saved, we are to take what God has given us and immediately start using it for His kingdom.

- People in Acts realized what they had wasn’t theirs. Use you your stuff for the kingdom.

- We must be busy folks; we must be busy in kingdom work.

(Slide)Colossians 3:1-2 (Find and Read) Where should our focus be right now as we are living on this earth?

- Our focus should be heavenly things, where our home is, where our eternity is.

- Military wanting to go home.

Matthew 6:19-21 (Find and Read) Jesus tells us an important truth that all of us need to be doing.

- Again, this idea of keeping our eyes toward heaven, focusing on eternal aspects, not so much earthly aspects.

- How do we store our treasures in heaven? By taking the example of the first two people in the parable. The one with 5 talents and the one with two talents. Immediately going out and putting them to work.

- How many of you labor at work and put in money towards your retirement? Or have done that? Why do we do that? To save up treasures that we can enjoy later when we don’t have to work any longer.

- Now that’s a good thing, I’m not condemning that, that’s a smart thing to do on earth, but I’m going to use it as an analogy. Our retirement home is heaven. The house that Christ is building for you and me right now. Our retirement fund is whatever you are doing right now to advance the kingdom. Whatever you are doing to serve the bride of Christ, the church. Whatever you are doing right now to invite people to the kingdom. That is saving up treasures in heaven. Our retirement fund. I’m going to talk more about this next week, but it matters what we are doing here, and it will affect how much or what you receive in heaven.

- Just like in this earthly life: you don’t put a lot into retirement, you don’t get a lot out. But if you labor and you struggle to put a lot into that retirement fund for many years, you are going to receive a lot in the end.

o It’s the exact same as working for the kingdom. Work hard, be busy, sacrifice, struggle a little, and store up your treasures in heaven.

Let’s move on in the parable, but let’s skip verse 18 for now, we will get to him next week.

Matthew 25:19

- This has not happened yet, this is referencing the rapture, when Christ takes his bride from the earth in an instant and we stand at the judgement seat.

- So, this judgment it’s called is not a negative thing, but a positive one. This judgment for us is like a reward ceremony where we will get rewarded based on what we do, how hard we have worked in this earthly life for the kingdom.  

- So, I plead with you, you’ve seen the Scriptures, don’t waste it. Don’t waste this time. Don’t spoil your retirement in heaven.

Matthew 25:20-23 talking about this reward system.

- Did you notice that Christ says the exact same thing to both people here. He gives them the exact same reward. How is that? That’s because God doesn’t grade you on results, only faithfulness.

- Because God gives everyone different talents, different abilities, different gifts in different ways and at different levels, and the results will inevitably be (different.)

- The reward system that God has is based on how faithful you are with what you are given.

- You see it’s not the two-talent guy's fault that he didn’t get 5 talents or that he wasn’t able to produce 5 more. It’s what God gave him in the beginning. The two-talent guy was only able to produce two more talents, but he was faithful in doing so, and that’s what matters to God. Same reward, same response.

1 Peter 1:17-19 (Find and Read)

- We see here again that God judges based on the work you do, not the results.

- If you call God your Father, conduct yourselves in fear while staying on this earth. Don’t waste this time God has given us to slack off and not serve.

- Because, we have been bought with a price, the precious blood of Christ.

Let me give you some examples of this biblical reward system:

- In evangelism, giving the gospel. If God gave you the opportunity to bring the gospel to 100 people, but throughout that process, only one person to whom you gave the gospel becomes saved, which category will you be judged on? The 1 or the 100? The answer is 100. God does the saving.

1 Corinthians 3:6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.

- If God does the saving, how can He judge you on how many people are saved? He can’t. But He rewards you with how faithful you are to the task He gave you.

What about teaching?

- Some have the ability to teach, others don’t, there are a variety of different levels of teaching. Some teach up here, others teach Jr. Church, and others teach the wee little kids in some of our classes.

- Who gets the greater rewards? Some think the pastors get the better rewards. Everyone will get rewarded the most and the same if each is faithful in the area they teach. Isn’t that awesome? Scripture teaches that if the Jr. church teachers are more faithful at that job than I am up here teaching, they will get the higher reward.

Don’t look down on yourself because of the abilities and opportunities God has given you. The one with 5 and the one with 2 talents each were joyful in giving Christ their labor, and Christ rewarded them the same.

- If you teach in any capacity, teach your heart out, with joy, not worrying about the results, just be faithful to what God has given you, and you will get rewarded the maximum amount.

- If you watch kids in the nursery, faithfully do that knowing God has given you that ability, that service to His church, and understand that you will get rewarded just as high or higher than any other servant of God.  

- Faithfully do the job or opportunities God has given you.

- And seek more, do more, not just because the church could benefit, but that you could benefit greater.

The greatest commandments. Loving God with all your heart, soul mind and strength. What is love?

John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. Loving God means sacrificing for Him. (Romans 12:1) also, serving His bride which He commands us to do.

1 John 5:3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.

- If someone loves God, they are going to listen to what He wants from us, what He commands from us.

(Slide) 1 John 3:16 (Find and Read) By this we have known love, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Loving neighbors means serving them and sacrificing for them. If we, according to God’s word are supposed to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters in the church, wouldn’t it stand to reason that we can at least give up a few hours of our time or energy or materials to serve them? To serve our kids in the church? To serve our community? To give the gospel to those who need it?

1 John 3:10 (Find and Read)

- The desire to serve is a big key to truly knowing if you are saved or not. It’s not the only one, there are lots of tests in 1 John to evaluate yourself to see if you are truly saved. 

- Just like in the parable, it will be manifested who is truly saved and who is not.

- If you are saved, you have received the love of God, if you have received the love of God, you will desire to help and to serve and sacrifice for your fellow believers, you will desire to love them.

- Can we do this perfectly? No. But desire and love should be there most of the time. Can unbelievers serve in the church? Yes of course, they just don’t have the love for God or neighbors, they don’t have the desire, they just do it thinking it will make them right with God, but it won’t if they submit to God’s saving grace first. Even Judas fooled the rest of the disciples. He was a tare among the wheat.

- But when we see people who call themselves Christians who don’t serve at all, or there is no desire to serve. That’s a big red flag. That’s concerning.  

- Or those who might serve one-time once year and say that’s good. And not desire for more? That’s concerning.

- Jesus says by their fruit you will know them.

- Again, there could be truly saved people not serving at all but having the love and desire, they may not have strong joy or a God might feel distant from them, and maybe they just needing a wakeup call, that’s all, doesn’t mean you’re not saved.

o But it’s all about the love and desire.

(Slide)Third Main Point: The main emphasis on this parable: God gives us everything we have but on a loan.

- God has given us a loan and He will expect a return.

- Do you at least have the desire to serve, to sacrifice, to love God and every human you encounter? Examine your hearts. I encourage those in here who are truly saved, to serve. Somewhere, somehow, and fulfill your spiritual worship to God. If you don’t know how or where to serve, ask us.

- Next week we will see what Jesus has to say to the one who decided to do nothing with what God gave him, and why that was.

Let’s pray.