We’re going to look at Matthew again this morning, Matthew chapter 25, if you would turn there with me in your Bibles. Matthew 25, verses 14 to 30. Matthew 25, 14 to 30.
It’s the parable of the talents. I’m going to read it for us. Yes, for it will be, Jesus is referring to the kingdom He’s been talking about and His return, all that we’ve been studying in 24. For it will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property.
To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received five talents came forward bringing five talents more, saying, Master, you delivered to me five talents. Here I have made five talents. Here I have made five talents more. 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.
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. 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. 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. So I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours. 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. Then you ought to have. Have invested my money with the bankers. And at my coming I should have received what was mine, my own with interest.
So take the talent from him and give it to the one who has 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.
There is in Japan a growing population of what’s called the Kikimori. Perhaps I’m pronouncing it wrong. But the Kikimori and at least a couple years ago they were over 500,000. And they’re a group of 18 to 25 year old young adults who have just decided life is too much. Life is too hard. And they’ve shut down. And to qualify as one you literally you don’t leave your apartment for at least a year. A lot of them staying in there years and years and years longer. And so some people have started trying to reach out to them and rehabilitate them and bring them back into society. But essentially they’ve just cut themselves off. They are wasting their lives away in their apartments just staring at walls. And as we’ve been talking about. About Jesus’ return.
We have been talking about how Christ wants us to be prepared. Yes.
Prepared for His coming. But on the same token if we’re prepared we’re laboring. We’re not wasting our time. And I think if we’re not zealous we could be like these people who with all the gifts we have. With all the talents we have. With all the. With all the opportunity around us. We’re not using our time well. We’re not doing what we can to labor for the Lord. But we’re simply wasting what the Lord has given us. And this parable points to not just the value of it. But the necessary lifestyle of laboring for the Lord. For His. His return. Are you laboring for the Lord? That’s the question from this parable this morning.
Jesus talks about a man who has gone on a journey. Or it means he went away from home. And notice it says his servants are in possession of his property. So they’re people to whom they must give account. And they must give account for what they do. Or don’t do with the stuff he’s entrusted to them. Now a talent is not a currency. A talent is a weight. And it would have been used to weigh precious metals. Like silver, gold, copper. Those sorts of things. So to have five talents. That was an extreme amount of money. But down even to one talent. That would have been considerable wealth. And so he gives these talents to these men in proportion to their ability. And notice the five talent servant. It says he begins at once.
We can assume the two talent servant was just as zealous. Because it says he had a two-fold or a hundred percent increase from his two talents.
Notice also not only giving them talents commensurate to their ability. It says that he went away for a long time. In other words, he didn’t just give them something that was within the possibility for them to do. He also gave them the appropriate time frame to do it. So he’s certainly not a hard master.
And the time came for him to settle with his servants. And the five comes forward and he says, Master, you gave me the five. And here, look, I traded, I bartered, I did what I needed to do. And here, I’ve got a hundred percent increase for your house.
And the master says, well done. It’s an exclamation in the Greek. It’s, well done. It’s really just, well, well, exclamation point. He calls him faithful. He calls him good. And he said, I’m going to give you more even of my stuff to oversee. Come and just experience the joy of my house, of being under my roof, under my name. The same thing for the two. The master says, well, come on in. You’re good and you’re faithful with what I’ve given you. Come, be over more and have my joy. They are. They are what you would call very devoted servants, aren’t they? They’re devoted to their master. They’re devoted to his house.
Chapter 24, which honestly, I was really rolling up my sleeves and taking deep breaths, preparing to preach through chapter 24, because chapter 24 feels an awful lot like Revelation. And you just get knee deep in that stuff. And there’s a thousand talking heads about what this means and that means and this means. And what we saw is it’s not valuable to just, you know, see Revelation, see the end time like a novelty, is it? What’s important for us is to learn what we learned. And it’s this. Jesus said, be prepared. Jesus talked to us about the beginning of the end. And at the beginning of the end, he said it’s going to be a time of great turmoil, suffering, persecutions. And that’s the beginning of the end. And we said that’s happened throughout human history. So we should always be ready. The beginning of the end is now. And we talked about the end of the end. When the abomination of desolation comes shortly after, Jesus will come back for his people. And remember, Jesus said the nations will mourn because they will go to judgment.
He says all this so we can be prepared.
And I think Jesus spent so much time talking about that because I want you to hear me say what is singularly important, what is altogether vital, what is undeniably crucial, is how you have responded to the gospel call of Jesus. There’s nothing more important in life. Nothing at all. I think as I grow older in my Christian faith, certainly as I preach more, I don’t find myself wanting to look under rocks and find like flashy, novel things to teach. I find myself more just wanting to preach the simplicity of the gospel, preach Christ crucified, because there’s salvation there. And I think that’s what vital religion is. It’s holding. It’s holding onto the cross of Christ. It’s believing by faith that Jesus is enough. I think that you can see a whole swath of preachers, theologians, people who get bored with the gospel and they’re looking under rocks for flashier, interesting spirituality, theology’s knowledge. And hear me say, those aren’t bad things. They’re just useless things when they’re not tethered to the gospel. They’re meaningless things when their creed is not, by grace through faith in Christ alone. They’re meaningless as they stand alone by themselves.
So, faith is the only thing that will preserve you and I through the turmoil of the beginning of the end and the end of the end. Faith will preserve us from false Christ. Faith will preserve us through turmoil, through persecution. It will keep us wise. It will keep us from falling away. See, Jesus’ plea is deny yourself, deny the world, listen to my gospel, stay on the straight and narrow and you will receive new life, new heavens, new earth in my kingdom forever. It’s a gospel that saves. That’s why you call it what? Good news. It’s good news.
But here’s where this parable, church, it comes into relevance. If our hearts are preparing, or are prepared by faith for the return of Christ,
simultaneously our hands ought to be busy laboring for Him. If we’re prepared spiritually, that must mean, and it certainly does mean, we’re laboring with our hands for Him. We are like these first two servants, devoted in all things. Devoted in all things.
A saved life, isn’t it? A transformed thing. It’s a new thing. And I think spring, you know, reminds us of that reality, doesn’t it? You see old, dead things and they come back to life and they’re beautiful. We have these flowers in our front yard and they multiply every year, every year. There’s more and more and more and more of them. But they’re just these beautiful, I can’t remember their names, but they just have these giant, fiery, orange blossoms that open up. And they’re so beautiful and we just watch for them every day to see when they’re going to open. And it reminds you, it’s a picture of the newness of life in Jesus. And if we have that newness of life, we’re a new thing in Christ.
The Scriptures are very clear. We’re not going to do the works we did before. We’re not going to labor for the old kingdom. Don’t think for one second your labors will save you. At the same time, don’t think because Christ has saved you, you’re free from your labors. They’re unquestionably linked. And it’s really quite practical when you think about it. It’s a question of, again, in my heart, if the Spirit of God has hold of me, I can’t do anything but what’s true of my newness. Nature. If I live according to the Spirit of Heaven, the Spirit of God, I’m going to labor for that kingdom because the affairs of Christ’s kingdom, it’s the affairs of my heart. Kingdom people do kingdom work. There’s no maybes. There’s no loopholes. There’s no passes. Kingdom people do kingdom work. It’s why James says in chapter 2, What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but doesn’t? Does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one says to them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also by faith by itself, if it doesn’t have works, it’s dead. And he goes on to say, Even the demons believe. And so what? So what?
Friends, if you’re a new thing, you’re going to do different things. Not the works that you did before.
And works, you know, should very much so be an obvious, a healthy indicator. I mean, I’m living according to the kingdom. Because I want my life to count for Jesus. I want to do things that magnify Christ. I want to make Him known. So I think if you find people who are like, Oh, I’m totally Christian. I’m in the church. But it seems like an unwanted burden to do things in the church, to serve in the church, to reach the Lord, to just give your labors and your time to Christ. Can we not just call that perhaps an artificial faith? Can we not just call that acknowledging Jesus? Because you know, there’s a world’s difference between acknowledging who Jesus is and really believing in Jesus. That’s why James says, The demons acknowledge Christ,
but it doesn’t make any difference. It does it for them. And so I think a lot of people in the church who say, Well, I acknowledge the gospel. It’s very true. Yes, but does the gospel animate your life? Does the gospel determine what you do? Is the gospel your guiding compass for how you live and how you serve and how you spend your life? If it’s so, the purpose of your life is what? The kingdom. It’s the whole thing of Matthew, which we’re about out of. But the whole thing of Matthew is the kingdom. The priority, the purpose is serving our King.
So it really asks a question of you, doesn’t it? And the question is this.
If you’re living a life in light of Jesus’ return, do you remain mindful of your responsibilities and Jesus’ expectations on you? Do you live mindful of those things? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, I worked harder than anybody else. I worked harder than anybody else. He said, I’m the least of all the apostles, and yet, I worked harder than anybody else. Why? Because he’s got grace, and he knows that, man, I was the one persecuting the church, and I was the one killing them, and here God would graciously call me, and that’s the story of all of us. That’s the story of all of us. Grace should awaken us to say, wow, God has given me what He’s given me. He’s given me the time allotment that He’s given me. I don’t want to be found irresponsible when my King returns. When kingdom comes, Christ will take account, of how we lived for His kingdom. So, see the great value in those two words. It says, the five-talent servant. What did he do? He went at once. It says at once. He didn’t say, well, you know, the master’s gone, so I can probably just pretend that, you know, this is my house for a couple weeks, and kind of roam around here, sleep in his bed, eat his food. You know, that’ll be good. That’s not at all what the servant did. He went at once. He used what? What he was given in the time frame he was given so that when his master returns, he could hear the well done, good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful over this. Come in to much more. Come in to much more.
Friends, I think that the word is zealous.
Do you find yourself to be zealous for the cross of Christ? Or do you find yourself allergic to the word zealous?
What is grace but, friends, the ability to recognize every human life, every human life is subject to God. Everything that exists is subject to God. And at the end of all things, God will call into account all people inside the church, outside the church, and He will judge us for what we have and what we did or did not do. Grace says, steward it well. Steward it well.
So how are we to think about that? Because I think when you hear talents, and first of all, Jesus is using that symbolically in this parable for just, you know, our lives. What does that mean? What Charles Spurgeon says, and this makes the water, I think, muddier, talents are anything and everything that our Lord has given us to help us use here for Him as His steward. So anything and everything is Charles Spurgeon’s interpretation of talents. I think we had to think more about that. What are our talents? I think the first thing that you and I should be mindful of, and this is common to every one of us, is the gospel. You know, if you are a Christian, you specially, you have the gospel. How often does Paul call it my gospel in the New Testament? It’s because he owns it. It’s a possession of his, but it’s not a possession he wants to keep for himself. Paul wants to give it away. And I think in the very same vein, you end up, if we are Christians, the very first thing that we should be stewarding well is the message of the gospel. It’s not a thing God wants us to keep to ourselves. And we can say, surely some people are really good at evangelism. You know, some people have a knack for it, but that doesn’t mean God doesn’t want to use you as an evangelist. It doesn’t mean He doesn’t want to use you to share the gospel. You know, I like to say there’s no other you than you in the places you go and the people you interact with. And I really believe that it’s always by divine appointment that God has put you in all the places that He’s put you. So don’t think, oh, with such and such, if such and such were here, blah, blah. No, no, no. God uses you because you have the gospel. And God will use the gospel through you. Secondly, I think that you and I have as talents are spiritual gifts.
In Romans 12, Paul lists some of them. He says, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let’s use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our, in our serving, the one who teaches in His teaching, the one who exhorts in His exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. In other words, the Spirit of God has equipped each of us with spiritual gifts for the sole purpose of loving, cherishing, building up the local church. So you had better believe God’s holding you accountable for how you are or are not nurturing the church with the spiritual gifts that you’ve been given. And your spiritual gifts, I think some people go, well, I don’t, I don’t know my spiritual gift. I don’t like have a cool one. You know, like, mine might be like administration or something. You know, I don’t know. Here’s the thing about spiritual gifts. I think it’s, it can be dangerous actually to try to like nail yours down. Like, oh, I’m the serve guy. Because you know, the serve guy, when it comes time to be generous, he goes, oh, I’m not the generous guy. I’m the serve guy. So I don’t have to be generous. And the generous guy can say, I don’t have to serve. You know, I got all, I got all this money I’m supposed to be giving away. So it’s, it’s something I think that you can have multiple varieties of it. And the Lord uses them in different shades, in different times throughout the life of a church. The point is, the skinny of spiritual gifts is God’s given them to you to love and nurture the local church. And we’re going to be held accountable for that. Here’s the next thing I think to think about is the home. And hopefully that, that isn’t, that’s not surprising. Hopefully, I think we talk about that good bit here. Husbands, we’re accountable for how we’re loving and leading our wives. We did a sermon on that a couple weeks ago. Wives, you know, we’re responsible for how we’re loving, supporting, building up, working alongside our husbands. Parents, we’re responsible for how we’re leading and loving our children. Children, we’re responsible for how we are and are not respecting, submitting to our parents. Very important context of discipleship. What’s the next thing that’s, I think, very important? Money. Now, some of us have more of it than others. But either way, friends, God wants to use your money. He wants to use your money for His, for His kingdom. Whether that’s giving to missionaries, giving to the local church, blessing the poor, the widow, the orphan that James talks about, blessing and just helping in the name of Jesus. You can do a lot with money. I’ve always found, you know, amazing with Charles Spurgeon. He accrued what would have, would have equaled millions and millions of dollars in today’s money just through all of his books, everything that he did. He died with $2,000 in his pocket. Why? Because he just gave it away.
Talent is not a thing. It’s a, it’s a measurement. And so it’s just a way for us to say, what do I have and how can I use it for God? I’m really encouraged about Miss Kathy who is, is teaching the ladies how to knit, to make a little, you know, little beanies for babies who have been saved from abortion. That’s incredible. That’s an incredible way to just use, well, that’s literally a talent for the kingdom and to teach other people and other ladies how to do that. I was super encouraged by Cameron and Alicia using their gifts to make that ice cream van for Mr. Bantu awesome. If you’ve seen that thing, I would not have been able to do that. Cameron’s got a mind to wire things up, do all that stuff. That’s awesome. That’s just a way to just be the hands and feet of Jesus and just share that with the community. That’s wonderful. I mean, do you have a lawnmower? Maybe the person across the street’s old and they’re paying money they don’t have to cut their grass. What an open, you know, an open door to, you know, just love, love someone. So the sky’s the limit, I think, friends, on that stuff, on the talents you have if you were to think about it.
The onus is on you
to seek God’s face, to be mindful, to be ready for the Spirit to kind of prick your heart and say, hey, hey, hey, hey, what about this? Hey, hey, hey, hey, what about that?
And lastly, I want to say on this, keep this in mind,
it’s very important and very simple but very profound. God is only holding you responsible for what He’s holding you responsible for. In other words, you know what you and I are really bad at doing is we see how other believers and other Christians are living their life and we kind of like we’re driving down the road like that’s a nicer car than I have and we’re not staying in our lane and what we’re doing is we’re wearing the weight of other people’s responsibilities and burdens and we’re not just taking care of our own. Like, man, He seems like He’s doing a lot for the kingdom and like He’s got special gifts and I’ve been trying to stay in my lane and do stuff and I don’t see the fruit that He’s getting and you start wearing on this gift. Like, hold on, hold on, hold on. The five talent and the two talent were both commended, right? The same. He didn’t say, well, you only had two but I guess you did fine with what you got. No, He was just as excited about the two as the five because the two was just it’s faithful. So friends, stop looking at other people. Stop sizing yourself up with other people and you say, Jesus, this is the life you’ve given me. This is what you’ve put in my hands. I’m going to be faithful with this right here. You know, I imagine heaven when we get there, I imagine we’re going to hear stories of the victories of people that you never heard of in this life. Missionaries you never heard of that never had earthly fame. School teachers, moms,
you know, construction workers, people who just said, man, this is where I am. This is what I’ve got and they just did things for the kingdom. I think we’re going to get to heaven and just, you know, our man way of seeing fame is just going to be turned on its head to the people and to the glory of God.
Paul says in Ephesians 5.17, Therefore, do not be foolish, but, what are you and I supposed to do? Understand what the will of the Lord is. Understand what the will of the Lord is.
I think about George Mueller. I read his biography.
And it’s an amazing story of this guy who just, you know, he’s saying, it’s all a need. It was a time when, you know, London’s children, there were so many orphans on the street and he just started, he started just praying and taking them in and taking them in and taking them in and, you know, he eventually had the title Robber of the Streets because he just, he had this orphanage with buildings and buildings, children and children and children who had no home, who were living on the streets in poverty and he did this great, amazing thing for God. You know, it’s wonderful. And he said, well, I don’t know that I can do that. Well, maybe not, but you know what I’m really encouraged about is when people say, you know what, I can buy a bunk bed or, you know, I have an extra bedroom and I know that there are children out there in the foster care system who need to be fostered or I know there’s so many children who need to be adopted so maybe that’s, that’s commensurate to where you’re at. The point is, God will call you to be faithful in a work. What’s that, what’s that work? I’ll give you a super silly example. Here’s a super silly one.
I had, so I just started back mountain biking. I used to mountain bike in my early 20s. I’m overweight. I’m trying to mountain bike again. That’s basically why. But I used to have this bike rack, a really nice one and, you know, it goes in your hitch and so I went up there in my attic to get this bike rack and I guess it had been there so long, all of the, all the like the holders that hold the bike in place, the little cradles, they like, they just crumbled when I touched them. I guess the plastic got so hot and cold so many times it just crumbled and I called the company and I said, we’ll send you new ones and I thought that’s great so a couple nights ago, you know, I was putting these new cradles on this bike rack and I remembered, and I remembered that, oh, it had to be 10, 11 years ago. Jessica and I weren’t married yet. I was serving at a church. I graduated high school and I saw this guy at a church and he looked out of place and I didn’t, I think the Lord put it in my heart, like, go say hi to him, you know, when the service is over. So the service is over and I go around there and I start talking to him and I was like, this guy’s from a completely different country. I couldn’t hardly understand him at all and we just started talking and he said that, yeah, he heard about this church and he rode 15 miles on his bicycle to be here. It was freezing cold outside and I said, man, can I just give you, can I give you right back home? I got a bike rack and I’ll just give you right home
and that started the beginning of a wonderful relationship with this guy from Ghana. Loves the Lord. He became a part of my family for a season. We do Christmases with us. In fact, he’s going to be here next month to preach. He pastors a small little church up in the city in Louisville and so just like small little way like, oh, a bike rack. Like, okay, Lord, look how, like, you use that just to be a blessing to a brother or, you know, God’s going to use you to be a blessing to a brother in this way and this way and this way and this way. He’s going to use you to like to open the gospel up to someone outside the church. So it’s just, again, the sky’s the limit. Are you interested in laboring is the question because there’s no shortage of work. There’s no shortage of work for the kingdom. Are we zealous people who with that five-talent servant say, at once. I want to live with that at once mentality.
If we go back to verse 24 in chapter 25,
it says, 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.
So I was afraid and I went and I hid your talent in the ground here. You have what is yours. 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?
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 that worthless servant into the outer darkness and that place there will be weeping and gnashing teeth.
So the third servant comes forward but he doesn’t come to say what he’s done he’s come to justify what he has not done. And he says, Master, you know I was afraid I knew you were just rough I knew you were severe and I just didn’t do anything and I think when we read that initially there’s this temptation to unwittingly sympathize with him well, you know he was afraid he didn’t know what to do at least he didn’t lose it but if you look a little closer he actually tells on himself he’s telling a lie because the master catches him in the lie he says, hold on if you knew I was this rough hard tough master and I was so merciless then you would have made sure to do something with my money that doesn’t even make sense what you’re saying does it? In other words the servant has told on himself that he has no devotion he has nothing but negligence and an uncaring spirit toward his master and his master’s house
what the servant doesn’t have is a love for the Lord or for in the parable the master so friends in the same vein if we are prepared in heart for Christ’s return and we’re laboring for him just the same we’ll be negligent in nothing negligent in nothing
here’s what’s plain about those who don’t set themselves to labor for the Lord and it’s that they just don’t have a love for the Lord if the fruit of a tree reveals the root of the tree and one is is cold toward heaven cold toward Jesus a plenty reasons why plenty reasons why they’re not serving plenty reasons why they’re not zealous it’s not because they have good reasons it’s because they’re not zealous and they’re not zealous because they don’t love the Lord everyone produces fruit you know and if we go all the way back if you remember all the way back in the beginning of Matthew what did John the Baptist say? he said even now the axe is laid to the root and it doesn’t say the one who doesn’t it says you know not fruit it says the one who doesn’t bear what? good fruit so the one who doesn’t bear what? so God’s looking for his good fruit and again I want to emphasize God is not weighing our worth based off of how much we do for him but on the flip how much worth we place in knowing God will determine the work that we do for him and we just simply can’t get away from the heart I’m working through Jonathan Edwards
religious affections you know it’s just a popular Christian classic and it’s all about the affections don’t think you’re a Christian because you’ve read the Bible don’t think you’re a Christian because of this don’t think you’re a Christian because of this it’s a matter of the heart what are the affections of your heart what lifts your soul out of your body if you will what drives you really that’s what makes us a laboring people is do we genuinely love the Lord because if we’re spirit filled believers you know what we’ll be willing to do we’ll be willing you know I’m going to count the cost and it’s a big cost and I count the sacrifice it’s a big sacrifice I see the risks and they’re big risks but I’m going to do it for the master’s house people do very stupid things for people they love people spend a ton of money they don’t have for people they love people are willing to give up their lives sign up to fight wars for causes they believe in friends if divine love really got a hold of you do you think you could withhold your hand from serving that love you couldn’t you couldn’t your love for the Lord will directly correlate to your labors for Him and so so if you have that love the spirit of God or even the pastor shouldn’t have to constantly twist your arm to do things like come on don’t you want to come to church like don’t you want to serve like don’t you want to get involved like don’t you want to grow and you know if you’ve ever been eager to disciple somebody you know you want to see people grow in the Lord you want to see people grow in godliness you’re familiar with the heartache and the burden of unmotivated disciples why am I always bending their arm to meet with me why is it like I’m doing them a favor or you know they’re doing me a favor to like to meet and to show up like why does it seem like I’m asking them to like stare at paint to share the gospel like why does it seem that way
you know and I think the mystery is easily solved because they don’t love the Lord I don’t think it has to be a great mystery I think that we can simply say if we don’t love the Lord we’re not going to be zealous for Him and it goes back doesn’t it to what Paul talks about if you’re of the flesh you can’t do works in the spirit and if you have the spirit you no longer want to do works of the flesh
so is Jesus calling for perfect servants like you better not fall into a season of sin you better not struggle no not at all if you think about Revelation what does Jesus say to the church in Revelation 3 to Sardis He says I know your works you have the reputation of being loved but you are dead wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die in other words Christians that really love Jesus really sin okay and it’s okay to say that and it’s okay to recognize like you don’t shoot a hundred all the time here’s what’s not okay is to have a life that’s marked in every season by slothfulness it’s marked in every season by do nothingness that’s kind of a dead giveaway friends back to the acknowledging thing versus really being believing in and loving Jesus do you really love Jesus it’s kind of a question at the end the servant’s not thrown out because he didn’t do enough oh you didn’t do enough you didn’t do enough for me that’s not it at all the servant’s thrown out because the master sees right into the heart of the servant and he sees he’s got no love for him he has no love for his house so why trouble him with it he’s removed from what he doesn’t love I want to say to you on the front side of that if you find yourself now in a season of spiritual slothfulness you find yourself making excuses you find yourself doing very little to know God to make God known to serve you know when the best time to repent of that and start living right is right now the days are short Paul says hey redeem the time live for the Lord count your few moments count your few talents because you know they’ll expire you know the best time to live for the Lord is what you have you’re not going to have it much longer whatever influence you have whatever power you have whatever gifts you have it’s not always going to be there it’s not always going to be there what are you doing with what you have in the time frame you have it
secondly I say to you and I’m always slow to say these things because I don’t want to make a genuine Christian doubt their salvation but I think this passage really begs us to consider the question do you have a heart do you truly know the Lord? Do you know the Lord? Because what is this parable saying to us? But that Jesus will come back in a very final, permanent sense. He will make irrevocable judgments on your soul and on my soul. And once that’s done, it’s done.
Eternally separated. So do you know Jesus? Do you love Jesus? Do you dwell on what He’s done for you? Is your life about just Jesus? Just Jesus?
A lady once asked John Wesley
that suppose he was to die at midnight tomorrow, how would he spend his time? He says, well, madam, just as I intend to spend it now. I would preach this evening,
tomorrow again at five, again in that next morning. Then I’d ride to the town over. I’d preach in the afternoon. I’d meet with the societies in the evening. Then I’d go to Reverend Martin’s house to expect some of his people. Entertain me. Talk, pray with my family as usual. Return to my room at ten o’clock. Commend myself to my Heavenly Father. Lie down to rest and wake up in glory. What a great answer. You should be living your life right now as if right now is all you’ve got left for the cause of Christ.
Have you cooled down?
Has Jesus become second best in your life?
Oh, friends, let’s wake up to the wonder of the Gospel. Let’s wake up to the weight of glory to be revealed for those who are faithful to the end.
Why do we labor for the Lord? Why do we labor for the Lord? Very simply, the first part of the parable tells us to hear Jesus say, well done. Well done, good and faithful servant. Come in. You’ve been faithful with what I’ve given you. You’ve been faithful in the time that I’ve given it to you. Experience my joy. Experience my house. Experience it forever. I want to hear Jesus say well done because I love Jesus and it’s His commendation I want. It’s Him that I want to say well done and come in. Christ has loved us. Friends, will we love Him? Christ has given all of His labors to us in the cross. Will we give all of our labors to Him?
Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that Lord, You’re not a hard master. You don’t demand things of us. You know we can’t give, but You supply us in the Spirit with all that we need.
Lord, You’re gracious when we fall. You’re good to be our supply and our support in every moment of every day through the Spirit and through the power of Your Word. God, I just pray for our hearts and our minds.
Lord, where they’ve been drifting and Lord, where we’re taking up our time, our resources with so many other things that don’t focus on Your kingdom. God, I pray that You would awaken us, Lord, to a passion for the name of Jesus. Awaken us to a passion for the kingdom. Remind us, Lord, of how short our time is. Lord, I pray more than everything we would each desire to hear, well done, good and faithful servant.
Jesus, we just say thank You for Your cross. We say thank You for Your sacrifice.
Thank You that it doesn’t, it doesn’t rest on us, but You are preparing us and You’re working in us and through us for the last day. We just love You.