Are We In the Game or Riding the Pine?

Whether you believe it or not, it's March. And despite the interchanging between cold and warm,

between snowfalls and rain and sunshine, we've experienced some nicer days,

which encourages us that spring is on its way.

In addition to warmer weather and rain, March brings with it lots of things.

For one thing, it brings a time change, which we've all experienced.

In fact, I think maybe some probably forgot that this morning.

The wonderful thing that we all had to do last night is get up at two o'clock

in the morning and turn on clocks ahead, right?

You did that, right? Well, I'll have you know that that clock up there is not right.

It says 10.05. So just so you know, I have an hour and 30 minutes to speak.

Aren't you glad for that?

March also brings with it a lot of other things. For the students and staff

in Richland Center School District at the end of March and into April is spring break.

And all the students are like, hallelujah, can't wait. And the teachers are

even more so, praise God, right? Yeah.

But then for me it also brings the annual

my annual wild hog hunt which i take guys and gals down to oklahoma to hunt

hogs but another thing that comes around every mart is the beginning of the

ncaa march madness basketball playoffs how many of you are really anxious for that to start One,

I see that hand, I see that hand.

I played basketball in junior high school. Well, I should say I was on the team.

But being short and skinny with the nickname of Munchkin, I didn't get much playing time.

And when I moved into high school, I knew I would be riding the pine if I even

made the team. So I went out for cross country and track, which I liked much better.

But I like to watch basketball, especially, however, I must admit,

I like to watch boys and girls' high school basketball much more than I like

to watch NBA basketball.

There's something about watching multimillionaire NBA players traveling,

fouling, missing many of their shots, even though that's all they do for a living,

it's not very interesting to me.

I can't figure out how they can even miss when they're paid multimillions of

dollars and spend eight hours a day shooting shots.

You would think they'd have it down. Now, basketball is a sport that has 10

players on the court at one time, five from each team.

Of course, if you are a team that plays against Richland Center High School,

you know that you get eight players on the court.

Three of them have eight players on the court against you. Three of them have

black and white stripes.

I love going to the games. It's so much fun.

Anyway, the goal for the coach is to get five players out on the court for his

team that are talented, strong, wise, and able.

Certainly there are more than five players on each team, but only five can be

on the court in any given time.

The rest of the players watch the game from the bench, or as it's called, riding the pine.

Some players are there because they're just not as good as some of the other

players. Some are there in case they are needed in a pinch.

Still, some players are on the bench because they might not perform to their full potential.

There's some reason they're riding the pine and not in the game.

It may not be that they have less talent. Maybe they just not use their talent properly.

Get it? So, however, we all have talents that are given to us by God to use for his kingdom.

This morning, we're going to read from Matthew. Now, in your bulletin,

I said I wrote Matthew 24, 14 to 30, but it's actually Matthew 25, 14 to 30.

This passage makes much more sense in the idea of the talents,

so we're going to read that.

Matthew 25, 14 through 30 in the Revised Standard version.

For it will be as when a man going on a journey called his servants and entrusted them to 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 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 the five talents came forward, bringing five talents

more, saying, Master, you delivered to me 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 did not winnow.

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 sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed.

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 be more given, and he will have abundance.

But from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away,

and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness.

Their men will reap and gnash their teeth.",

So this morning, I want us to concentrate on the man who received one talent.

I mean, we would think that we'd want to be looking encouragingly about the

one who received five and turned it into five more, but we want to look at the

one who received one talent.

How much are we like this man sometimes?

We're given talents, and we don't use them to the full potential that we could.

We see here that this man really didn't know his master at all because he said that he was a hard man.

He accused the master of reaping where he didn't sow and gathering where he didn't scatter.

The way the master repeated this accusation doesn't mean that it was true.

It was the master's way of saying, if you really thought that was how I was,

then that should have motivated you to work even harder to please me.

We don't want to be like the one-talent man, yet sometimes we are.

We want to be the ones in the game, not the ones riding the pine.

And so this morning, I want us to look at three things I believe we could do

to make sure that we're more like the five-talent servant and the two-talent

servant than the one-talent servant.

The first thing we need to do is we need to know our talents.

In modern day American culture, we really don't understand what a talent is.

In fact, if we read this scripture in Revised Standard Version and we read the

King James Version, it talks about the talents.

In the New International Version, it says bags of gold.

But we don't understand really what that is. In fact, oftentimes we have used

the word talent to speak about our abilities.

And that's true. That is a talent.

But the word talent is a unit of measure, just like the talents that we have

is a unit of measure of how we can succeed and help others.

And so we look at this and we think of a talent as being just a little coin

that was worth a different value than others.

You know, kind of like a talent was a quarter instead of a penny,

which they're going to stop making now.

I don't know if you heard the news, but they're talking about stopping to make

the pennies because it costs almost three cents to make one penny.

Now that doesn't make sense to me. But anyway, in Jesus's time,

a talent was a measure of weight.

The talent was the largest unit of weight in his day.

In fact, the talent would have been equivalent to about 3,000 shekels,

and everybody knows what a shekel is in weight, right?

Oh, well, maybe not. Okay, so anyway, so the shekel was the basic unit of weight

in the Jewish culture at that time. And in today's terms...

A talent weighed between 57 and 80 pounds of silver or gold or whatever was being weighed.

The Hebrew word from which this was derived describes it as about the size of a large loaf of bread.

So can you imagine a large loaf of bread size of gold or silver?

You know, it's probably heavier than most of us want to lug around, right?

This unit of measure was usually used to measure the weight of gold and silver, as I said.

In Jesus' time, a talent of silver was worth equal to about 6,000 days of wages for a common laborer.

That's over 16 years worth of pay, assuming all of the days of the year were

worked, which wouldn't have been so in Jesus' time because they had the Sabbath day that I observed.

A talent of gold was equal to 180,000 days wages.

So how many of you have 180,000 days to go yet?

No, maybe not. I'm intending to live to be 120 years old so I can be a crotchety old man.

Anyway, just so you know that I will still be around at that time,

so students, I'll be there.

Yeah, and I could get 50% off at camp. Yeah, there you go.

Somebody's been listening. Anyway, 180,000 days would have been 500 years worth

of wages at the present day value of silver, which now stands at about $35 per ounce.

One talent of silver would have been worth between $31,900 and $44,800.

Now, that doesn't seem like a lot. How can that be 600 days wages?

But in that time, it would have been.

One talent of gold at a value of $3,000 per ounce today would have been worth

between $2,736,000 and $3,840,000.

Now that's some serious coinage. Can you imagine what two talents and five talents would be worth?

So when we're talking about talents, we're not talking about some coins jingling around in a bag.

We're talking about real serious value, right?

In the same way, with our talents and gifts today, we are to value what we are given.

We may look at them and think they're not really very valuable,

but God has given them to us, and if God has entrusted them to us,

they must be worth something.

Who you are is priceless to God. We must know our gifts and our talents.

We all have some, and they're all value. Sure, just like the parable this morning,

some have more than others.

I'd love to be able to play guitar or play piano. That's just not my gift.

But each of us is given opportunities with the gifts that God has entrusted to us.

1 Corinthians 7, verse 7 says this, Paul writes this, I wish that all of you

1 Corinthians 7:7

were as I am, but each of you has your own gift from God.

One has this gift and another has that.

Because Antonio's voice was

high and squeaky, he did not make the tryouts for the Cremona Boys Choir.

He would not have succeeded in the choir and ensemble contest yesterday.

Well, for one, he wasn't even here. But anyway, when he took violin lessons,

because his voice was squeaky, he took violin lessons, the neighbors persuaded

his parents to make him stop.

There's something about screaming cats that doesn't please people.

Yet Antonio still wanted to make music. His desire was to make music.

His friends gave him a hard time because his only talent was whittling.

So when Antonio was older, he served as an apprentice to a violin maker.

His knack for whittling grew into his skill of carving, and his hobby became his craft.

He worked patiently and faithfully, and by the time he died,

he left over 1,500 violins that he had made by himself, by hand,

each one bearing a label that read Antonio Stradivarius.

They're the most sought-after violins in the world, and one will sell for more than $100,000.

Antonio couldn't sing. He couldn't play. He couldn't preach. He couldn't teach.

But his responsibility was to use the ability and talent he was given,

and his violins still make beautiful music.

Zig Ziglar once said, you are the only person on earth who can use your ability.

We have to know what the talent is that God has given us because we're the only ones that can use it.

And second, we must grow our talents.

1 Corinthians 12 verses 4 through 11 says, there are different kinds of gifts,

1 Corinthians 12:4–11

but the same Spirit distributes them.

There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.

There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone,

it is the same God at work.

Now, to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.

To one, there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom.

To another, a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit.

To another, faith by the same Spirit. To another, the gifts of healing by that

one Spirit. To another, miraculous powers.

To another, prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits,

to another speaking in different languages, and still to another the interpretation of those languages.

All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to

each one just as he determines.

So it is God that gives us those gifts. He bestows those gifts upon us.

He entrusts us with them to be good stewards of the gifts that he has given us.

We need to grow our talents. We can't be like the one talent servant.

We must invest those talents and things that will bring our Heavenly Father.

Returns on what he has invested in us.

If we're not growing our talents to be used for the kingdom,

it's kind of like parents who send their child off to college.

The student goes through four years of college university classes, majoring in pre-law.

When he goes on to law school, he then graduates with honors.

Then he comes home and gets a job flipping burgers at Burger King.

That isn't a very good return on his parents' investment.

And the talent that has been fostered in this young man's life.

Yet as Christians, that's exactly what we do with the talents that God has given us.

We do just like that lazy one-talent servant did, and we bury our talent in

the ground. We don't use it for the kingdom and for the blessing of God.

In fact, we must remember that we're not in this for us.

We're in this for him and for his kingdom and for his glory.

I think there's something that we say about this time. Would you say this with me?

God is on a mission to redeem a lost world to himself, and he chooses to use

us, his chosen people, to accomplish his mission.

You have been given talents, some in possessions,

some in abilities, some in gifts of the Spirit, and God wants us to use that

for his mission to accomplish his purpose.

God has given us talents to use to further his kingdom, and when we don't use

these talents that he has entrusted us with,

he feels like those parents who sent their son off to college to have him come

home and flip burgers and live in their basement and waste that potential.

The great violinist Niccolo Paganini willed his marvelous violin to the city

of Genoa, Italy, on the condition that it must never be played again.

The wood of such a fine instrument, while used and handled, wears only slightly,

but set aside, it begins to decay.

Paganini's beautiful violin has today become worm-eaten and useless except as

a relic and something to be looked at.

A Christian's unwillingness to invest his talents may soon destroy his capacity for usefulness.

You know the old adage, lose it or use it or lose it.

There are many people to whom God has given great talents and abilities,

and either they are using it for the glory of God, or they aren't using it at

all, or they're using them for themselves with the wrong motives.

God has given every Christian certain talents and abilities,

and his intent is that the church might be made stronger through everyone working

there. That's what Paul was writing about in his stuff.

We all work together as one body for the edification of the church,

lifting everything up. That's what Paul was talking about.

When we grow our talents, everyone wins.

So we have to put forth the effort and the investment.

We have to grow our talents because this is just as in our passage this morning,

the master will return and we will have to show our talent, what we've done

with what God has given us.

Master, in our passage this morning, went away.

The Bible doesn't say, doesn't tell us why he went or where he went.

It just says he went on a journey.

Now, nowhere in the versions that I've studied does it say that the master told

his servants when he would return.

I mean, if he did, then they would obviously know that we better have this read

just in the nick of time when he comes back.

He gave them their talents and money left and said, I'll be back.

Well, something like that. Anyway, the thing that I see is that the five talent

servant and the two talent servant

went to work right away, expecting the master's return at any time.

The one talent guy just dug a hole, covered up his talent, and wasn't too concerned

about the return of the master.

He probably even thought he was going to be just fine when the master returned

because he had protected his master's investment by covering it up with dirt.

Or maybe he thought the master would be gone a long time and would return,

having maybe even forgotten that he had given the servant the one talent, and it would be all his.

The master did return, and he brought the servants back together,

and then they proceeded to show their talents. The five-talent servant gained five more.

The two-talent servant also doubled what his master had entrusted him with.

And when it came down to the one-talent man, the only thing he had was the one

talent his master had given him. The master wasn't very pleased with the response

that the one talent servant gave him.

Verses 28 through 30 tells us what the master commanded.

He said this, So take the bag of gold for him and give it to the one who has

ten bags, for whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance.

Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken away from them,

and they will throw that servant into the outer darkness where there will be

weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Something very similar to what Jesus said in Matthew 16, verse 27,

Matthew 16:27

for the Son of Man is going to come.

Now, this was talking about the Son of Man, and the previous one was talking

about the Master, alluding to the same thing.

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels,

and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

Now, it doesn't mean that we're going to have our salvation by that,

but we're going to be rewarded by how well we have fulfilled and been good stewards

of the talents that God has given us. Jesus went away, and he'll come again.

And just like in the story today, all we know is that he's coming back someday.

And someday we're going to be judged by God, and we will have to stand and give

an account of what we did with what the Master has given us.

Did we use what God has entrusted with us wisely? Did we use what he gave us

for the good of his kingdom?

Or did we bury those gifts, not using them at all?

Or worse yet, did we hide them and keep them for ourselves?

We're in the time period between the master taking his journey and the master

returning from his journey.

If we have buried our talents in the dirt or used them for our own benefit,

there is still time to dig them up and start investing them in the kingdom now.

That way, when the master does return, we will have something to show for what he's given us.

First two servants were determined to bless their master with more.

The third was determined not to take a loss.

The first two were willing to work hard and take risks. The third one took no risks.

First two received the gift. The third refused the gift.

The first two wanted to advance the master's kingdom. The third had no interest

in what mattered to the master.

The first two viewed the money as an opportunity.

The third guy saw it as a liability, afraid that he would lose it.

Well, he did in the end anyway.

First two saw a blessing. Third guy saw a burden.

First two allowed the master's gift to change their lives. The third refused

to let the gift touches life?

Are we like the one-talent servant where we know that God has entrusted us with

gifts, but along with that entrusting of gifts to us, there's such a huge responsibility

and we're just such a liability?

Or are we like the five-talent servant or the two-talent servant investing what

God has entrusted us with, regardless of how much it is for his glory and for his kingdom.

Are we in the game, using the talents to help our team win, or are we just riding the pine?

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close this time of worship,

we give you thanks, and we know that you have bestowed on us many things.

You've given us and entrusted us with gifts, talents, possessions.

Some have more than others. Some have gifts more than others.

Some have gifts that oftentimes are not seen, and yet we want to make sure that

we use our talents that you've given us to bring glory to you and to build your kingdom.

For you're on a mission to redeem a lost world to yourself, and you have chosen

us, your chosen people, to accomplish that mission.

Heavenly Father, we thank you again in Jesus' name. Amen.