Nov 15, 2020  SERMON ARCHIVE

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father Almighty, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, AMEN

The text for our meditation today is the Gospel Lesson for this 24th Sunday Adter Pentecost, Matthew 25:14-30. There we read these words:

14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

We begin in the name of Jesus, AMEN

Dear friends in Christ. This Gospel Lesson before us has often been misunderstood and misapplied: it’s usually preached as a stewardship sermon, where the theme goes something like, “God likes those who give.”

Now, without a doubt, there is some stewardship application in this text, but this isn’t a parable about stewardship. It’s a parable about the kingdom of heaven, and it falls on the second to last Sunday of the church year for a reason. This is about how you are to live as you anticipate the Lord’s return in glory.

Let’s review the parable quickly; and as we do so, I think that the question you need to ask and think about is this: What is the sin of the third servant that makes him worthless, cast into the outer darkness? If you get that right, then I think you’ll get the rest of the parable right.

The parable begins with a man going on a journey; and before he goes, he gives his servants a share of his property. He gives to each servant according to the servant’s ability. One receives five talents—a talent is about twenty years’ wages for a servant, so this one is entrusted with a hundred years’ worth. The next receives two talents, about forty years’ worth of wages. The third receives one talent, which is still an awful lot of money.

After a length of time, the master returns to settle accounts—to find out what they’ve done with his money. The one who received five talents has doubled it to ten, and the one who received two talents has doubled it to four. Each receives the same praise from the master: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”

Please note an oft-overlooked detail: this master is really, really wealthy. Between these two servants, he’s now got roughly 280 years’ worth of servants’ wages—and he calls it “a little.” To this man, these funds are nothing. Given his wealth, he’s not going to miss one talent if the third servant fails to produce.

And the third servant has failed to produce: he comes to the master and says, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.”

Please note: the master got his original investment back: the third servant didn’t squander it, lose it, steal it or gamble it away. But the master is furious.

He says, “You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

So what makes the master so angry, what makes him so furious that he casts the servant into outer darkness? It’s not that the servant failed to double the investment: the master got his original investment back. And he also is not angry about that one measly talent the third servant never gained, because that talent really never was his to begin with.

No, what makes the master angry is that the servant regarded him as a hard man. There’s no proof that the master was a hard man who always took what wqasn’t his: this is simply how the servant thought of him. The servant considered his master to be ruthless, unforgiving. This would potentially have adverse effects in all sorts of ways.

Ruthless masters are easily resented, and it seems from the parable that—rather than serve the master—the servant had done nothing at all while the master was gone. He was so afraid of provoking the wrath of the tyrant that he had created in his mind that he did nothing with what had been entrusted to him. He had lived a life of fear, paralyzed into inaction.

Or to put it another way, he didn’t trust the master at all. He didn’t see the master as merciful: he saw his life of service as simply an exercise in trying to outwit an angry boss for as long as possible.

Again, there’s no proof that the master is actually a hard man: this is simply how the servant regards him.

But because the servant regarded him as ruthless and treated him as ruthless, the servant ended up with what he had invented. Essentially the master said, “You don’t believe I’m merciful, but hard. No matter how I act, this is what you are going to believe. You’d much rather that I be away than here with you. Therefore, you don’t want to be here if I am: so begone.”

That was the sin of the servant. He believed his master to be hard. Because he believed his master was hard, he didn’t want to serve him. Now, if you’ve got that down, the parable should begin to make a lot of sense and you can begin to apply it.

It’s obvious that the master is the Lord. He is “gone away” in that He waits to return in glory on the Last Day. In the meantime, He has entrusted many gifts to His people—to you. You have been made stewards of what God has entrusted to you, and you are to use it in service to Him.

So many preachers have a habit of running pell-mell into rabbit holes with this text. What exactly are the talents in the parable?

Some have said that the talents represent money, since they symbolize money in the parable. Some have said that the talents represent your abilities, whether it be accounting skills, artistic instincts, an aptitude for fixing things, a knack for playing the ukulele, whatever.

But it doesn’t really matter: what matters is that every good thing you have is a gift from God. It’s not really yours, but entrusted to you to use as His servant, His child

How, and how much are you supposed to make use of these gifts in order to earn the Master’s praise? That’s another rabbit hole that really doesn’t matter.

The question is this: how do you regard your Master? Do you regard the Lord as hard and ruthless, or gracious and merciful? If you regard the Lord as hard and ruthless, this will be reflected in your stewardship of all that He entrusts to you.

You will live a life in which your primary goal is to escape your Master’s attention and not arouse His wrath. You will live a life where you fear God’s anger for your missteps. And you will not live your life as one who is confident that God loves you.

The truth, the Gospel truth, is that God is not a hard man. Where God is, there is where you will find mercy, grace and kindness—because God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. There is no greater demonstration of this than the cross. The cross is the greatest demonstration of God’s grace and mercy, for that is where God demonstrates above all that He is not hard. He is man, there, though: Jesus Christ became a man, that is took on human flesh to win salvation for you by His death.

There are two more demonstrations of His grace and mercy in our text. The first is that He gives you all sorts of gifts for use in this life—money, talent, goods, time, etc. Everything you have is a gift of God.

The second demonstration of God’s mercy and grace is found in the master’s words to the first two servants: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”

After your less-than-perfect stewardship here, what does the Lord say of heaven? He tells you He is going to give you even more.

He is not a hard master. He is gracious and merciful, and He continues to pour out upon you grace and life, all for the sake of Jesus. By the faith that He gives, you can cling to this treasure of salvation that Christ has won for you.

And for the sake of Jesus, you can be confident that, on the Last Day, your gracious and merciful Savior will say to you “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.

Christ Is Risen.