The Parable of the Talents
By David A. DePra
Transcribed by software with minor edits.
In Matthew 25, we have a series of parables by
Jesus. For
the most part, they all begin with the same phrase, “For the kingdom of heaven
is likened unto, or is like a...”
What that tells us is that Jesus is describing
how God works with his people spiritually.
The Kingdom of
heaven or the Kingdom of God is the rule of God.
It's the realm
of God. Within
that rule or realm of God is how God works because he's sovereign.
All of these
are descriptions of how God works with his people, and so is the case with the
parable of the talents in Matthew 25.
Now Luke tells us, in Luke 19, which is the
parallel passage, Luke tells us that Jesus told this parable because they
thought that the physical kingdom was going to appear immediately, and he wanted
to make sure they understood it was not.
That's why he
begins this parable, verse 14, Matthew 25, by saying, “For the kingdom of heaven
is as a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants and
delivered unto them his goods.”
He is showing them that there is going to be a long time
between His departure and His return.
Jesus wants to describe to them what's going to
be happening during the Church Age.
Now, of course, they don't understand any of
these things at that point. WE
can understand by looking back with a 2,000 year history of knowing what has
happened since. They
would not have understood this, but nevertheless, they would afterwards.
Jesus
often told them, “You're not going to understand what I'm talking about right
now, but afterwards you will.”
And so is the case here.
And so Jesus begins to talk to them about God's
dealings and workings with his people in the spiritual kingdom or the spiritual
realm -- or if you prefer, this is how God works with His people in our
spiritual life, in Jesus Christ -- because Jesus is the King and Christ in us is
the Kingdom of God.
Now, I read verse 14, “The Kingdom of heaven is
as a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants and delivered
unto them his goods. And
one to one, he gave five talents…”
Now let's stop right there and get some
definitions starting with this term talents.
For some
reason, folks jump to the conclusion then when it uses the term talents, it's
talking about the ability to do something. We surmise from that that here is
Jesus picturing the giving to people of the ability to do stuff.
In fact, this
has been misinterpreted to such a degree that we think it actually means things
like playing the piano, singing, organizing, or whatever it is.
We say, Well,
we can use those talents to the glory of God.
But in reality,
what is being spoken of here as a talent has absolutely nothing to do with those
things whatsoever. Talents
here means money -- it's a denomination of money of that time, because he Jesus
wants to emphasize that what God is giving, what Jesus is giving of his own
goods, is that which is of great value, He uses money.
Jesus pictures Himself giving unto one five
talents, and to another two talents, and to another just one talent.
Now, we need to
understand that he gave them all the same thing.
The amounts
might have been different in the parable, but what he gave is the same thing.
It's
all talents. It's
all money.
Now, what do we suppose the talents represent
spiritually speaking?
It says here clearly in verse 14 that these are goods,
symbolically speaking, type and shadow, that belong to Jesus Christ.
Well, clearly
the talents represent his life.
There could not be anything of more value.
But in
addition, it also represents truth.
Now, I say that simply because in the first
chapter of the Gospel of John, it says of Jesus, “In him was life, and that life
was the light of men.” And
so when you receive life, you only receive life because you receive Jesus.
And
he's also, in addition to being the life, he is the truth.
He can't
separate the two. To
make a long story short, the goods that Jesus is picturing himself giving to his
people, it's his life and the light that goes along with it.
Now, of course, there's a whole lot more that
goes along with it as well. Those
are two primary things. We
read, for example, in Collagen's chapter two, that all the treasure of wisdom
and knowledge is found in Christ.
All.
We read in Romans 8:32 that God has freely
given us all things in Jesus Christ.
We read in 1 Corinthians 2, that we understand
what God has given us freely by the Spirit.
This is a picture of the fact that God Almighty
has wrapped up everything that He has to give humanity in His Son -- and has
freely given to us His Son. Now,
I say it that way because a lot of us make the mistake of thinking that, yeah,
we received Jesus at salvation, but then God adds to us on top of Jesus a whole
bunch of other things. That
is not the truth. We
can get into some pretty serious error if we begin to draw that out into an
experiencing of Christ. God
has not given us things in addition to Christ.
God has given
us Christ in whom are all things.
There are no things in addition to Christ.
There
is only Christ, but in him is all.
It's a great thing to understand that if God
has given you Christ, if you have received Christ, then you have all that God
has to give. There's
nothing he has left to give. Now,
somebody's going to say, Well, I'm a Christian.
I received
Christ, but where are all the things in Him? Well, it's only as we discover and
grow to know Christ that we come into an experiencing of all that God has given
in him.
Again, you can't separate the things of God from
the one in whom they're given.
He is, in fact, the personification of life, light,
truth, and all that God has to give.
There are many ways to picture this, and Jesus
uses many ways to picture it in the parables.
This is but
one. When
he delivers unto him his goods, it doesn't say it outright.
It's a little
bit of a different picture. But
what we're talking about here is the fact that Christianity is Christ in you,
the hope of glory. If
Christ is in us, he is our life and he is the truth.
He is our
light. In
him, God has given us all things, and we are to set about discovering Him.
As we
will read in this parable, God wants us to multiply the life and the truth, and
we're going to discuss what that means.
This is all
about receiving Christ and all that is in Him.
Jesus uses a
picture that they could understand, and of course, we can as well.
Now, again,
verse 15, there were different amounts of the goods of Jesus that were given,
and it says according to each his several ability.
Now, we need to talk about that because it would
almost sound like God's playing favorites.
If he gives
more of life to one, then he does to another.
But that's not
the picture that God is giving.
It isn't that he gives each person a different
amount of Christ. It's
that each person is in a different phase of spiritual growth such that they can
experience what God has to give.
So in other words, and it says it here,
according each to his own ability, he gives the person five talents because that
person at that point is able to experience and express and be responsible for
that much. But
it's all the same Christ. How
many understand we all receive all of Christ at salvation? But all of us can't
express him and be responsible and know him all the same at all times.
We're all in a
process of growth. But
this process of growth is actually not what we think.
We think that
what it means to grow is to become a spiritual giant, so now we can handle five
talents. That
a thing, and that's nonsense. To
each his own ability has to do with the fact that in order to experience Christ
and walk in him, and manifest him, we have to be reduced and made weak.
That determines our ability, if you will.
To
plug this into the parable, the reason that this first person was given five
talents was that he was weak enough and had come under the work of the cross
enough to be able to be responsible for five talents and to multiply those five
talents according to the glory of God.
We have to get this.
This is not
about being good enough to receive five rather than two.
This is about
being weak enough or showing you're weak enough.
It's about
decreasing that he might increase.
It's about being reduced under the work of the
cross so that, if I can use this language, God can entrust you with his goods.
Now,
even though in the parable, the way that it's set up, and I think again, these
parables are told to reveal spiritual principles that we can take and apply to
living and experiencing Christ.
Even though in the parable, it looks like, all
right, this was handed out at the beginning of the life of these people and it
was maintained through to the end that they were called to a comp.
I think that
there's a wider application of this.
I think it's a fact that if I'm given two talents
at some point in my Christian experience, I think if I'm under the work of the
cross and go on with God, I can be reduced to the point where the two can now
give way to maybe five more or 10 or whatever it is.
This is a
growth process. Your
ability, as it's described here, that determines how many talents you receive is
going to change. Hopefully,
the more you are reduced, the more you decrease in your own self-rightelessness,
the more you decrease in your self-occupation, the more you decrease in your
spiritual pride, the more Christ can increase in you, which is the talents.
Again,
this is the life of Christ in us.
Now, of course, all of this goes back to the
statement that Jesus made in Matthew20, Matthew 16, where He said, if anyone
would come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross daily and follow
me, for whosoever would lose his life for my sake will find me as his life.
How
many see that that's a decreasing of us under the work of the cross, but then an
ongoing increasing of him in us.
It's all about where our faith is, it's all about
where our righteousness is, and it's all about the fact that we know the truth.
It's
not academic or theological knowledge, it's about relationship, it's about
faith. We
will pick up our cross daily, and as we do, we will decrease, He will increase,
which is a multiplying of what we were originally given.
I mean, the
fact that it can be multiplied, and we see that at the end of the parable, the
guy that had five had 10 at the end, it shows that this is a very fluid picture
of spiritual growth. We
don't need to get into this keeping score thing that Christians tend to do, in
competing with one another and even comparing ourselves with ourselves.
It's just a
spiritual principle. If
at one point in time I have two talents, well, I can multiply that to 500.
If at
one point in time I have five talents, I can multiply that to 500.
The point is
that even though the amount's different here in this picture, it's still all
life in Christ. And
that can't be limited and defined by amounts.
It's eternal.
So it
is talking about each person's ability, because of their stage of spiritual
growth, to be responsible for and entrusted with that which belongs to Jesus,
life and truth.
That ability is determined by how much they've
been reduced under the work of the cross.
Right away, we
see that this is completely different than natural thinking would indicate.
The
ability has to do with being emptied of yourself.
The talents are
his life and his truth. We
are always in the process of multiplying that or not against spiritual
principles as to how God works with his people.
Here we have
Jesus giving to one of his servants, it's pictured to five talents, to another
two, to another one, to every man according to one's own dunami ability, power.
The
less power that you have is your own ability of the better.
Because when
you are weak, then you are strong in Christ, according to the Apostle Paul.
And it
says, And then he took his journey.
Now, obviously, all believers are not lined up,
so to speak, at the same time receiving talents from Jesus Christ.
This is just a
picture. And
so he gives you your talent, so to speak, yes, when you're saved, but then also
in an ongoing way, it's adjusted as you go along.
The same with
me, you could live 100 years ago and that could happen a thousand years ago and
it would happen or today.
It's a picture.
It's a
spiritual picture. Picture.
Now,
there's also another picture here within a picture.
We could apply
this to the entire Christian life in a general way, but we can also apply it
into different seasons of the Christian life.
Perhaps God
wants me to enter into a particular season of experience with Him.
Maybe it's a
trial of my faith and it can be pictured when this begins as God giving me two
talents. What
did I do with what I was given during that trial? And at the end of the parable,
that would apply to the end of the trial in this case.
And so you can
apply this on many levels. And
that's not a departure from what the Bible is teaching here because he says, For
the kingdom of heaven is like unto.
It's about God's spiritual dealing with his
people, as I said. We've
got to keep that in mind when we read all of the parables, spiritual principles
that apply on many levels to the life of the believer.
Okay, so in the
parable, he takes his journey.
It says, verse 16, Then he that had received the five
talents went and traded with the same and made him five other talents.
And likewise, he that had received two, he also
gained another two. But
he that had received the one went and dug in the earth and hid his Lord's money.
We
have two that multiplied what God had given, and we have one that, as we're
going to see, did not. Now,
gained by trading, says here, says, I think in Luke, multiply.
What does that
mean exactly? Because a lot of Christians easily get under bondage on these
matters. We
think when we read a parable like this, that we're under some pressure, under
fear of punishment even for some, that we go out and we start saving souls.
That
we go out and we start a ministry.
Then that, of course, presents a particular
problem for those who can't preach, who don't have those particular abilities to
minister and so forth. We
begin to question, well, how can I multiply? How can I make the grades, so to
speak? Can we understand we do that? We're actually putting ourselves under a
law. We're
right back under legalism of a different kind.
Instead of
trying to earn salvation here, we're trying to earn a reward if we do that.
That's contrary to the word of God.
God would never
have things that way, and that's proven a thousand times over in scripture.
And so
how do you multiply? Well, you multiply once you understand that this is life
and truth. You
understand that you first have to multiply what God has given you through Christ
in your own self by growing your own self.
You can't go
out and minister Christ if you don't know Him.
You can't be an
expression or an extension of Jesus.
He is Christ.
If he's not
even having his way with you. You
can't. The
first way that you multiply, we alluded to it earlier, is you have to decrease
that he might increase in you.
You have to lose your life that there might be a
greater and greater release of his life in you.
If we're not
responsible for that over our own experience in relationship with God, how can
we say that we're called to minister to others? That would be absolute nonsense,
and yet so many people do that.
So many people today, and I'm not trying to be
critical, but I think it needs to be said because it explains the state of the
church.
So many people today are pastoring churches and
in ministry that should not be.
They were never called to that by God, or if
they were called, they jumped the gun and didn't get their own personal life
straight and solid in Christ and then just launched out in a ministry.
It's created
really, at the very least, spiritual immaturity everywhere, but really it's
created error. Because
if there's a principle that holds true in the New Testament about people that
ought to be ministering as pastors and so forth, is that they themselves have to
be solid in Christ. I
mean, all the qualifications for ministry that we find at Timothy, Titus, and
other places boil down to that in the end.
But then, of
course, our idea of a pastor in this day and age in and of itself is in
question, which I don't have time to go into.
How do you
multiply the life and truth of Christ? Well, certainly as an underpinning, as
the basis of any ministry and the outward to other people, you have to have room
made for Christ in you. That's
done by God crucifying in you whatever is hindering the life of Christ in you.
Now you have to have that, or it's not really
multiplying or gaining by trading.
Again, what you've been given is not an
ability, so to speak, to preach.
What you've been given is not, so to speak, on
the first line of interpretation, these spiritual gifts.
What you've
been given is Christ. How
many understand that all the spiritual gifts and all the fruit of the Spirit are
of His life? What do we think they are of? Our life? There's nothing of God that
comes from natural life in Adam.
There's nothing of God that is found in you by
nature. We
need to get rid of this nonsense that God roams the earth or roams the body of
Christ, looking for someone with the great ability to do this or that, says, I'm
going to make you a preacher. That's
utter and complete absurdity. God
couldn't care less about that.
God Almighty gives us His son, and I've already said
it, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
In whom are all
the gifts of the Spirit. In
whom is all the fruits of the Spirit.
The fruits of the Spirit are Christ being
manifested.
Why do we think it's another absurdity.
Why do we think
that there are two in dwellings in a believer, the Spirit of God and then also
Christ? And that all the gifts are of the Spirit of God and all the fruit of the
Spirit of God, but over here is Christ, and I guess all he did was save us.
This
is nonsense. Jesus
Christ dwells in us by the means of the Spirit of God.
He said so.
The
Bible says so. If
there's any doubt about that, read John 14, 15, and 16, Jesus makes it clear
that every purpose for which the Spirit of God was to be given, was to reveal
Him, to glorify Him, to manifest Him, boil it all down in the purpose of the
Spirit of God is to reveal Christ to us and in us, and then through us to
others. It's
all about Jesus Christ. The
Christian doesn't manifest the Holy Spirit.
The Christian
manifests Christ, and the Holy Spirit does the work to make that possible in the
believer. We
need to establish that because we get these things all confused and mixed up.
Even
though on the surface, it might not seem like it's an important thing to
distinguish, it ends up dovetelling off into areas that, frankly, create great
error and great misinterpretation in the Christian life.
We need to come in to a knowledge of Jesus
Christ. We
need to experience Him. And
if we do, then His life will be multiplied.
And yeah,
because it's his life, then there will be the gifts and then there will be the
fruits. But
it's all Christ. You
can't be out here trying to multiply gifts and fruits.
Notes to the
disregard of Christ. We
have to have our faith in Him and abide in Him.
Jesus said so,
if you don't abide in Him, there's not going to be any fruit.
Do we think
there's going to be gifts? No.
Abide in Him means to not abide in ourselves.
Abide in Him
means to live in and out from Him, relying upon Him and drawing from Him for
every single last drop and shred of life for every single thing we need, and is
the entire object and preoccupation of our living.
The Lord will
teach us how to do that. Ask
Him to do whatever it takes to bring us into that, and He'll do it.
It'll take
time, but He'll do it. That's
how, in a personal way, you and I can multiply the life of Christ in ourselves
personally.
Multiply the life and multiply the truth.
You
will come into a knowledge of Him, but you have to pick up your cross daily and
lose your life. You
have to be under the work of the cross that you might be crucified, that your
self-righteousness and your religiousity might be crucified, and that the life
of Jesus might have free reign and free release.
Not only of
that's happening in you and I personally can we expect to be able to minister to
others. Now,
before I begin to talk about ministering to others, I want to turn to first and
second Peter. I
want to turn to the first chapter in each of those epistles where it actually
uses the word multiply. It's
tremendous verses. In
first Peter, chapter 1, verse 2, at the end of verse 2, it says, Grace unto you
and peace be multiplied. Shows
you God's will. Now,
how is it multiplied? Well, second Peter, chapter 1 tells us how.
It says in
verse 2 of second Peter 1, Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through a
knowledge of God and of Jesus, our Lord.
How many
understand that's a personal, inward knowledge?
It's what Paul was talking about to the
Galatians. When
he said, I travail that Christ be formed in you.
Galatians 4:19,
he meant inwardly, realized and expressed.
That's an
inward revelation and knowledge and experiencing of the person of Jesus Christ
who dwells in the believer. That's
what Paul travailed that we would have.
That's the
purpose of God. It's
the basis for everything. It's
what Christ in us is all about.
Peter says, It is through the inward
realization. It
is through the knowledge. That's
what the word knowledge means in the Greek.
It means an
experiencing of. It
is through the knowledge of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ that grace and
peace be multiplied unto us. Peace
is a fruit of the Spirit. Grace
is an overall, really, that covers all the life and truth of God.
God wants to
bring us into a knowledge of Himself.
But that can't happen simply by God narrating
to us biblical doctrine. The
doctrine we're going to have and need to, but God's got to reveal Himself to us
in an inward way, which we'll always agree with doctrine biblically, but this
has to be something that is inside that comes to govern us.
If God reveals to us his son in an inward way,
that is going to be done in our spirit, but it's going to filter down through,
through the work of the cross by abiding in Christ and by seeking Him.
It's going to
filter down through and eventually renew our minds, and we're going to
understand and be able to believe all the more, and the result is going to be
grace and peace. Isn't
it great to know that if you know Jesus, grace and peace will be multiplied?
Doesn't that tell us something about Him? We all want grace and peace, and we
tend to ask God for grace and peace as things.
God would say
to us, I can't give you those as things.
They're not
things. They're
the result of knowing Christ because they're all in Him, the result of
experiencing Christ. Right
there, we have examples of how things are multiplied.
Now, that's a
basis of things to personally have the life and truth of Jesus Christ multiplied
in us. But
it isn't the will of God that we receive from him and bottle it up and bury it
like this one guy did.
God wants us to be vehicles through whom He can
express Christ. He
really wants us to be extensions of Christ.
Now, what we
need to understand about that is that you don't need to be a preacher to do
that. You
don't need to be even in a church to do that, if you come right down to it.
You
can minister to the body by simply allowing Jesus Christ to have you.
If the life and
truth of Jesus is multiplied in you and I, if we're seeking Him and have
ourselves before Him in every way that we know how, in every situation, and His
life and truth is being multiplied in us, then we are ministering to the body of
Christ spiritually. We
are an expression of Christ to the body and an extension of Christ to the body.
Why?
Because we are members one of another in Christ.
Now, this is a
growth process, and I'm not suggesting that if I grow spiritually,
automatically, all the impacts of that are in you or vice versa.
I'm talking
about an overall effect. It
can't be denied. If
I am one in spirit with you and you are one in spirit with me, then to the
extent that the life of Christ is multiplied in me through my weakness, the life
of Christ can have a greater and more free impact in you.
Now, the opposite is true too.
If anyone is in
Christ and they begin to corrupt and be irresponsible with regards to the life
of Christ, that will hurt the body of Christ.
It'll hurt the
health of the body. We
read that in 1 Corinthians 11.
For this reason, many of you are sick and some of you
have fallen asleep. We're
members of one another, and you can never separate that.
This isn't a
matter of needing to be geographically with people.
Now, if you can
be in a growing, healthy church, fantastic that there are many that can't be or
are limited somewhat in that. But
you can nevertheless have your own life in Christ and be under the work of the
personal cross and be experiencing weakness in yourself onto having Christ as
your strength, and that will be administered to the body.
It'll be one
you won't even see. You'll
be benefiting people, you don't even know what their names are.
You'll be
benefiting the greater body of Jesus Christ going all the way back to Adam.
I'm
not suggesting the people that have passed on have an immediate realization of
that. But
I am saying that when Jesus Christ comes back and all the body is resurrected
and joined together literally, I am saying that whatever has been accomplished
in each one, there will be a sharing.
I'm glad to know that.
Your suffering
is not just for you, neither is your rejoicing.
Paul teaches
that numerous times in the New Testament.
When one
suffers, all suffer. When
one is comforted, all are comforted.
But see, in this day and age, we have so
corrupted and watered down the truth in Christ that we barely even realize any
of these things when they happen, if they even do happen.
Well, if they
are real and Christ really is in one person, then it is going to affect life in
Christ for another. And
we've got God's word on that now.
We can contribute life, multiply life to the
body of Christ, even if we don't seem to have any outward ministry at all.
We can
do that just by having our own life in Christ.
Of course, all
of this is enhanced by prayer.
You and I need to be praying constantly, praying always
in the Spirit. That
means praying always, not by emotion, not by brain power, but in the Spirit.
In
other words, be praying in the sense of joining the Lord Jesus in His will.
In His
intentions and in His agenda. We
can do that.
We can pray for each other.
Paul said, I
suffer for the body's sake. I
fill up that which was lacking for the body of the sufferings of Christ.
Jesus
left apart, left over that we have to accomplish in that way.
He accomplished
the redemption. I'm
just saying bringing it into experience, we can impact each other.
Now, Paul in 2
Corinthians 4 explains this. He
explains it in such a way that it could not possibly be misunderstood.
2 Corinthians 4
is a chapter about ministry. The
chapter begins where Paul says, seeing we have this ministry.
Then he goes
on, talks about having the treasure in an earthen vessel that's Christ in us,
the hope of glory. He
makes it a point to say that the power is not of us, but of God.
Again,
everything in us that is of God is of Christ, and nothing that is in us is of
us. The
job of the cross, the job of the Spirit of God is to bring us to the place where
we see we are nothing, where we are reduced in our own strength.
Not to put us
down, but to get us to the point where we are able to rely upon Christ.
I'm going to understand that to the extent that
we are dependent upon Christ, the power of God can move in and through us.
Why?
Because He's the power of God.
It says so in 1 Corinthians 1, Christ, the power of
God. To
the extent that you are depleted of your own power, and I'm not talking about
just saying it, I'm talking about it happening, and are reliant fully by faith
on Jesus Christ, well, now you're reliant upon the one who is the power of God.
God.
That
is the only way in which the life and truth of Jesus can be multiplied in us or
through us. Now,
he says we have this treasure and earth and vessels, and he talks about all the
struggles and the sufferings and the trials in verses 8 and 9.
But verses 10,
11, and 12 are the important verses here that I want to get to.
Notice ministry
in here. Notice
how the ministry he's about to talk about is based upon the personal experience
a person who would minister has with Christ.
He says, Always
bearing about in the body. Now,
that's a personal experience. Always
a bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.
That's picking up your cross, that's experiencing
Christ in the fellowship of his sufferings.
Always bearing
about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might
be made manifest in our body, for we which live are always delivered on to death
for Jesus' sake. That
the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal body.
How many see
that's gaining by trading within? That's multiplication of his life within the
person. But,
he adds in verse 12, so then death works in us, the death he just described.
But as
a result, life in you. That's
the death in one member of the body, under the work of the cross, resulting in
life, yes, in that person, but also a life that is shared that impacts the rest
of the body. This
is how you and I can gain by trading.
It's how you and I can multiply to God's glory
and the benefit of others, the life and the truth and all that is in Christ, all
that he has given us to be responsible for, we can do that.
It comes back
to the personal responsibility that God places on us with regards to what he has
given us.
Now, how many understand, and this is certainly a
related thing, that we should desire that other members of the body of Christ
experience and know Christ, yes, as much as we do, but even more if that's how
it needs to go, if that's how it's God's will.
In other words,
I should have God's heart with regards to other members of the body, and I
should want others to have that.
If I think what I have is fantastic, I'm going
to want others to have that. I'm
going to want others to experience the Christ that I've experienced, and that's
going to be my prayer. That's
going to be why I lay down my life and multiply and gain by trading.
It's not going
to be just for me. It
has to happen in me, but it's not going to be just for me.
It's going to
be first for God's glory that I may be a member of his body that he might use
and glorify himself, and then so that I can be an expression of him and an
extension of him as a member of his body to his glory, but that I could be
someone who could be used as a vessel to contribute life to others.
And as I've just explained, I can contribute life
to others without even saying a word or ever meeting them.
We can be that
in Christ. Now
let's get back here to the parable.
I left off at verse 19, and here we come,
here's Jesus coming back. And
it says, After a long time, the Lord of those servants came and reckoned with
them. In
other words, he's going to call them to account and ask, What have you done with
what I gave you? What have you become, really? It says in verse 20, So he that
had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, 'Lord,
you delivered unto me five talents; behold, I have gained beside them five
talents more. '
His Lord said unto him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.
You have been
faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.
Enter, thou,
into the joy of the Lord. Now,
again, spiritual principles here, this can happen all within this life in
Christ, but it certainly has that application in the overall sense towards the
end of the age when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
God has entrusted all of us, if you're in Christ,
with some life and some truth.
When I say some life, I'm not suggesting that some gets
more of Christ than others, just some realized life.
This is our
state of growth, in other words.
We all have a certain realization of Christ at
any point in our spiritual growth.
We have that, we have truth, and we're
responsible for it. God
always holds us responsible for the life we have.
No more, no
less, but he does hold us responsible.
He says, Be faithful over this.
What does that
mean? Well, think of it as a servant who is in charge of his master's
possessions. Paul
said, This is how you ought to think of us, said this in 1 Corinthians 4, as
stewards of the mysteries of God, as ministers of Christ.
As it said in
the beginning of the parable, everything Christ has given us belongs to Him.
None
of it belongs to us, and we need to treat it that way.
We have no
business doing with the things of God what we please.
We have no
business using the things of God for our own personal benefit.
These people that make money over the things of
God, they're committing an abomination.
They're being
unfaithful to God. I
mean, it's just unbelievable. It's
so clear and so clearly laid out in scripture.
A faithful
steward or a faithful servant does not take ownership over the master's
possession. What
he does do is the will of God to the master's glory.
What he does do
is multiply and gain by trading with the master's possession.
You'll note
that here at the end, the servants, they don't keep either the five talents they
were given in the beginning or the ones they gained.
They don't keep
any of it. They
give all that back to the master.
But because of the faithfulness, they are able
to receive authority and greater riches, really.
Now, in this we
find a principle. God
Almighty, as I began to say, has entrusted us with a certain amount of life,
light and truth, a certain experiencing of that as we go along to Christian
life. I
want to emphasize again, unless I'd be misunderstood, I'm not saying that we are
given different amounts of Christ.
No, we're all given the same amount of the same
Christ, but we're all in a process of discovering Him.
Along the way, we have discovered different, I
guess we could use the word amounts of Christ.
It's an awkward
word, different dimensions. We
all have a different experiencing of Him.
All of it could
be the truth, although there's a whole lot more of Christ yet to come.
But we're all
in those different phases. We've
been given a responsibility and an accountability over that.
God says, when
he said, Go and gain by trading, he says, I want you to be faithful over this.
I want
you to be a steward over this to my glory.
Now, if we are
faithful over what God has given us, then what does God take into the eternal
ages? Well, He doesn't take things.
He takes the faithfulness in you and I, or turn
it around, he takes you and I as faithful.
And He says,
Great, well done, good and faithful servant.
Now I know you
are faithful. You've
been faithful over a little thing here.
Now I know you
can be faithful over big things.
How many see that the issue here is not the few
things or the many things. The
issue here is the faithfulness because it speaks to the relationship that we
have with Christ.
So again, you may not be out there preaching or
seeming to have a lot to be faithful over.
You actually do
if Christ is in you, as I tried to explain.
But it doesn't
matter, just be faithful over what God has entrusted you with.
Do as will with
regards to what God has entrusted you with, whether it seemed to be big or
seemed to be small. Because
at the end of the day, it's not going to matter.
What's going to
matter is whether you were faithful.
Faithful, yes, over that, but faithful to Him.
Did
you allow Jesus Christ to have His way with you? What have you done with Christ?
What does He mean to you? And what has He been able to do with you? If you've
been faithfulful, and really, when you come right down to it, and I say this
often, but I think the greatest expression of faithfulness would be to have a
perpetual attitude to Jesus Christ that, Lord, I belong to you.
Do whatever it
takes. Lord,
I'm not my own. I
don't own anything. I'm
here for you alone, and do whatever takes to bring me into the fullness of what
you want to accomplish in my life.
That's an abandonment to Jesus Christ.
That's
faithfulness. That's
true stewardship. You
can do that over a little thing.
I'm going to understand sometimes the most
difficult thing of all is to be faithful to Jesus Christ when nothing seems to
be happening, when he seems to be indifferent.
When he doesn't
seem to be, so to speak, using you, when he seems to be indifferent to you and
not paying attention to you, especially when you might be suffering.
Very difficult
to be faithful in our heart and very easy to begin to despair and to gripe and
so forth. No,
be faithful to him. He
hasn't forsaken you. He's
in you for Pete's sake. There
is no such thing as forsaking if he's in you.
Be faithful
over that, and God will say, Well, you've been faithful, period.
I have a
faithful servant here, and now I know that this servant will be faithful over
anything that I entrust him with.
That's how you enter into the joy of the Lord
and are able to have authority with the Lord.
Now you also
received the two talents came, you delivered me two more talents, and I've
gained another two and well done, good and faithful servant.
You have been faithful over the few things.
I will
make you rule over many things.
Same thing.
How many
understand that the guy that got five talents and the person that received two
talents in this life differing amounts.
Nevertheless,
both became faithful and they all received the same reward.
Read the
parable of the laborers in the vineyard.
Servants were
made responsible for different amounts of work, but at the end of the day, they
all received the same reward. We
should want that for others. We
should want those who don't seem to have done a whole lot, if in fact, they have
been faithful, to receive every bit that we're going to receive, if in fact, we
have been responsible for much.
Paul wanted that.
Paul was made
responsible for a lot and suffered a lot, and yet it was his desire that
everyone receive a full reward.
When I say reward, I mean something, a
maritorous reward. I
mean a full result, which is what the term reward means.
This is what we
ought to desire and this is what is pictured here.
Whether it was
the two or the five, the faithfulness is what mattered, and they were both able
then because of the faithfulness to be made rulers over many things.
Now let's get to the guide that had a bad outcome
because there's a lot of truth in here as well.
Actually,
there's truth in here that ought to be very encouraging.
Now, when I
used to read this, I used to get scared because, again, am I guilty of hiding my
talent? You've heard that. If
you don't use it, you'll lose it, and all these conclusions people come to over
these parables. But
then I began to read this with a different understanding.
Even though
this isn't a good outcome for him, and we certainly don't want to be in his
place, they're nevertheless in this is a tremendous encouragement.
Let's read it
and see what that is. Verse
24, Then he which had received the one talent came and said, 'Lord, I knew that
you were a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you
have not strewed. I
was afraid and went and hid your talent in the earth.
So here, have
what's yours. And
as Lord answered and said unto him, you wicked and slothful servant, you knew
that I reap or I sowed not. Was
that your understanding of me?
And was your understanding of me that I gather
where I have not strewed? Well, if that was your understanding of me, he's
saying to him, then you ought to have at least put my money to the exchangeers,
and then at my coming, I should have received my own with interest.
Let me stop it
right there. Now,
obviously, this person did not do what was acceptable to the Lord.
He was not
faithful over what God had entrusted him with.
But in this
correction, we can derive both encouragement and instruction.
This particular
servant had a wrong and faulty and really erroneous knowledge of God.
This person did
not know God according to the truth.
Now we have to remember that this last servant
here did receive some light and truth.
He received one talent.
There was a
core there. There
was a basis there. But
despite that, he continued under a false knowledge of God.
He was afraid
and had a completely corrupt idea of what was required of him.
But Jesus here
is telling him something that ought to be an encouragement to us.
He is saying,
All right, you didn't know me.
In fact, you were all wrong about me.
You believed lies about me.
You didn't
believe the truth about me. But
even within your deception, you could have turned at least enough to multiply a
little, which is represented by the interest, because the guy did receive some
light and truth in the beginning.
What we're being told here is, listen, you and
I may be in a bad place right now.
We may be trapped in legalism.
We may have a
false knowledge of God, be afraid of God, be under condemnation, have some of
the most ridiculous ideas about God.
We may be in a cult.
We may be in a
false group. We
may be totally out of it. But
if God is calling us, if he has dealt with us, we at least have a spark in us.
We
have something in us whereby. In
that context of darkness, we can still say, I believe Jesus.
I still believe
Jesus. I've
found that to be true. I've
found that in the past I've been in, and I'm talking about way back when I was a
teenager in groups that taught error, to be in situations where there seemed to
be such darkness and despair to where I just couldn't find God.
In the midst of all of that, you can turn to
Jesus Christ and believe and trust him and seek him.
Even if you
don't understand anything else on the face of this Earth, you can at least
understand he is faithful. If
you've got one talent, you can turn around.
That's an
important distinction. If
you don't have any talents, then you're not even at that point.
That's okay,
because God hasn't called you.
But this is somebody who has at least enough to turn.
You
don't need to understand theology or academics.
You don't need
to have a vast experience in Jesus Christ.
You can be in
confusion and in error up to your lower lip, but you at least have enough to
say, Listen, I can't explain, I don't understand, but I'm going to trust Christ
and not my understanding. You
do have enough to do that. And
Jesus is telling us we need to.
And if we do, God can begin to work with us.
He can
begin to take faith. Without
faith, it is impossible to please God.
For whoever would draw near to God must believe
that he exists, in other words, that he is present there available and that he
is responder, the Greek word is, to those who diligently seek him, seek God
wherever you are in whatever condition you are in.
He will be faithful.
And if you've
been given anything from God, you've been given at least enough to know, enough
to turn. It'll
be in you to do so. This
guy did not do that. He
could have, and that's where he failed, and that's the condemnation here.
You
should have put my money to the exchange.
You should have
believed despite your false knowledge of me.
You should have
at least known that I was faithfully because I did give you one talent and he
suffered loss. Take
therefore the talent from him and give it unto him, which has ten talents.
And he
says for unto everyone that has shall more be given and he that has abundance.
But
from him who has not, it shall be taken away, even that which he had.
And really in
there we see again that principle that the body is all one, that if God doesn't
get his will and his glory out of one person, he's going to get it out of
another because he's going to have that fullness.
That's the parable of the talents.
I think it's an
encouraging parable. It
tells us that no one is insignificant in Christ, and that all that God tells us
to do is be faithful and true to Him over whatever He has entrusted us with.
That's faithfulness, and that's a reverence for
the person of Jesus Christ who dwells in us.