Parables: The Talents & Eternal Perspective

Mark: How many's glad to be in church this morning? Are you glad about it for real? Good. Presence of the Lord is here. Why don't you turn and find a friend right next to you and just tell him, Man, you make Sundays look so good. Tell somebody. Encourage them. They need it. They need it. Well, we made it through the book of Ephesians, and everybody said, Amen. We're going to start something new, Lord willing, for the next few weeks. And we're going to look at the parables of Jesus. Does that sound fun? Good. Well, it doesn't matter because that's what we're doing either. Either way. Go to Matthew 25, verse 14. I'm going to kick this off this morning looking at the parable of the talents. If you take notes, you might want to grab a notebook. There's we've got some ground to cover today. but believing that this is gonna be encouraging, eye opening, our hearts are gonna burn for Jesus more. Amen. Hallelujah. That our minds would not just get filled with more information, but we would encounter a man. Matthew 25, verse 14. Let's go. For it will be like what is it? It is the return of Christ. The soon coming kingdom of Christ, 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 bill ability. Then he went away. Verse 16: He who had received five talents went and traded and made five more, so also he who had two talents made two more. But he who had received one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Verse 19. Now, after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. If you got your hard copy of your Bible, maybe circle that settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more, saying, Master, you delivered to me five talents. Here I have made five more. His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of the Lord, your master. And he also had two talents came forward, saying, Master, you delivered to me two. Here I have made two more. And his master said to him, Same thing, same commendation. 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. Verse 24. He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, Master, I knew you to be a hard man. Reaping where you did not sow, 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 reaped where I did not sow, where I gathered where I scattered no seed. Then you ought to have at least invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received what was mine with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to the him give it to him who has ten. For to him 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. Verse 30, and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the reading of the Word of God. Let's pray. We need help this morning. Beautiful King, Jesus, we thank you for these words of life. We we truly do. We don't want just more information. We want the heart of God, the revelation of Jesus. And so we pray, Holy Spirit, would you fall in this place? Let our eyes be open. We want to behold the beautiful man, the crucified one, the resurrected Savior. We want to burn for you more in Jesus' name. Everybody said amen. All right. Anyone got that person in your life? You know, who has a story for everything? Anyone? Yeah. It doesn't matter what you're talking about. You could casually mention that you hurt your knee hurts. And all of a sudden they're explaining an injury that happened during a recreational softball tournament in 2001. They remember the inning, they remember the weather conditions. They remember the field conditions. They remember the urgent care doctor. And you're like, dude, I just bumped my knee on the table, you know. They got a full cast of characters, they got backstories and side plots. People are introduced to the story who have absolutely nothing to do with the outcome. So my sister's neighbor had a cousin named Gary, and you're like, Gary doesn't matter. Gary will disappear halfway through the story and never be mentioned again. But apparently, we needed to know that Gary used to work at Lowe's. Not the Lowe's on Glenstone, but the other Lowe's. You know what I'm talking about? You could say, dude, we're thinking about getting a dog. You are trapped now. You accidentally just opened up the pet family archives, because they're gonna tell you about every dog they've owned. After Rusty, we got Max, and then there was Daisy, and Max and Daisy had puppies, and pictures are coming out now, and getting the bloodlines and the medical history, and Max was the protector and Daisy was the sweet one. You can try to escape by changing the subject, but that doesn't work because they got us because they got a stuff a story for every subject. Right? How many's got those people in your life? They're the best. You probably picked up on this, but ⁓ did you know that Jesus has, you you picked up on this, Jesus has this interesting way about how he taught, right? Jesus had all access to truth. He could have given the world's greatest systematic theology ever written. He could have handed out definitions, seven principles, five steps, a carefully organized document explaining the kingdom of God. But instead, he just told stories. This is brilliant. When Jesus told stories, there was no wasted characters, there were no meaningless details, there was no unnecessary side plots. Every farmer. Every field, every seed, every servant, every coin, every sheep, every detail was carrying revelation. It was all pointing to something deeper. Jesus would take something, something ordinary, something that his listeners would have seen a thousand times, and he would use it to reveal something eternal. Jesus placed eternal truth inside everyday images. It's the wisdom of God from farming to fishing, from working to weddings, He would take those familiar images and He would reveal to us an unfamiliar kingdom. That's what a parable does. They take what we can see and reveal what we may have been missing all along. So as we approach these parables together for the next several weeks, I just want to encourage you as we lay the foundation today. Let's not approach these stories as cute illustrations. Let's peel some of these off the flannel graph. Anybody remember the flannel graph? Yeah. But that we would approach these stories as an invitation into the kingdom of God. Jesus is about to show us through these stories what God is like, what his kingdom values, and what eternity considers important. And what May be happening inside of you already without you even realizing it. A parable, it's not just a story with a moral ending, it is an unveiling of reality. Jesus didn't tell parables just to make us think, He told parables to make us see. He's pulling back the curtain with these stories and saying, This is what is actually true. This is how my Father sees. This is how the kingdom operates. This is what your life is really moving towards. And suddenly you aren't interpreting the parable anymore. The parable is interpreting you. And the story becomes a mirror, and somewhere in the middle of it, the light turns on, and you go, ⁓ man, he's talking about me. I'm the soil and I'm the servant. And I'm the older brother standing outside the celebration. And I'm the person who walked past the wounded man on the road. So today we're look at ⁓ the parable of the talents, Matthew 25. Matthew 25 is part of a ⁓ larger teaching called the Olivet Discourse, okay? Which begins in Matthew 24. So I just want to encourage you this week, read Matthew 24 25. Easy read. Matthew 24 25, best understood when you put them together, okay? It's called the Olivet Discourse. This is the most concentrated teaching Jesus ever gave about. The end of the age, his return, judgment, and the responsibility of his people as they wait. Okay, Jesus has just entered Jerusalem for the final week before his crucifixion. He's confronted religious leaders. He's tipped the tables over, he pronounced judgment on Jerusalem. And as Jesus and his disciples are leaving the temple, the disciples point out the magnificent buildings. And Jesus responds, There will not be one stone left upon another that will not be thrown down. That statement would have been almost unimaginable to those boys. So they follow Jesus to the Mount of Olives. Are you guys going with me on this journey? They follow Jesus to the Mount of Olives and they sit him down and they ask him, they go, Bro, tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming in the end of the age? The olive discourse is Jesus' answer to that question. So important because it shows us how we, me and you, followers of Jesus, are called to live between two massive realities. The first is when G G the first reality is that Jesus has already come, and the second reality is yet to happen, Jesus is coming again. Jesus is committed to teaching me and you how to live in between that space. Because waiting, man, it can do strange things to the human heart, right? And when the king seems delayed, people have a tendency to start living like he's not returning. Right, not necessarily because they stopped believing in his return doctrinally. We would still affirm that, we would still sing about that, we would still say we believe that, but his return stops functioning as a present reality. And it becomes a doctrine we believe without a horizon that we're actually living towards. And what happens when the second coming of Jesus moves to the edge of our awareness, and it happens to all of us, right? If I said, raise your hand if this has ever happened, one hundred percent participation if you're honest, we're all in this together. But what happens when we when it moves to the to the periphery of our awareness is urgency starts to fade. And the temporary stol slowly starts to feel ultimate. And the life that we're building here begins to feel more real than the kingdom that Jesus is bringing. We still believe in eternity, but we begin making decisions as though this age is all there is. One my favorite quotes by C.S. Lewis, he said, if you read history, you find that the Christians who did the most for this present world were precisely those who thought the most about the next. It's since Christians have largely ceased to think about the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one. That's the danger that Jesus confronts, Matthew 24, 25. That we would, me and you, would not become spiritually asleep in the middle of the story. Right? That we would not live our lives with little awareness of his second coming. So from Matthew 24, 45 to Matthew 25, 45, 24, 45, 25, 45, Jesus gives four parables. Of what readiness unto that second coming day looks like in the life of a believer. Okay, so you have the parable, the faithful and the wicked servant, you got the wise and foolish virgins, you've got the servants entrusted with talents. This is we're gonna look at today, and then you got the sheep and the goats. These four pictures are essentially saying the same thing: the master is away. The king has not yet visibly returned, but he will And when he does, everything will be brought into light. The day of his return will reveal what we actually believed about him during the days of his delay. So these four parables are intended to make us watchful and prayerful unto that day. These parables are actually the mercy of God before the day of judgment. Jesus is telling us in advance what will matter when he returns. Biblical readiness is not a date circled on your calendar. It's a life arranged around the returning king. Does the way I'm living make sense in light of the fact that he is coming back? The entire gospel is is presented with an eternal horizon. And it's listen, it's the wisdom of discipleship to live today in light of what will become obvious on that day. Matthew 25, 14, for it will be like the return of Christ will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. This is the foundation of the parable. Notice that the servants do not own what they received, the master owns it. The servants are just managers of somebody else's property. Now let's say I got a hundred dollar bill here. I just pulled out everything I own in my savings account for this all for this object lesson. I got a hundred dollar bill. Let's say I place this into somebody's hands. Okay. Now, before I gave it to you, whose money was it? Most people would say, ⁓ this is yours, bro. It came out of your wallet, it came out of your bank account, it was in your possession, you were holding it. The money belonged to you. Okay? Now let's say I place this hundo into your hand. Now whose money is it? Seems logical, but there's actually a bigger reality. And that's that neither one of us ever ultimately owned the $100. It just moved from my stewardship and into yours. It changed hands, but it never changed owners. It belonged to God when it was in my wallet. It belonged to God when it was in my hand and it still belonged to God when I placed it into yours. The only thing that changed is who was currently responsible for stewarding it. Which means that my entire life is entrusted. My body's entrusted, my influence, my opportunities, my platform, my spiritual gifts, my relationships, my money, the people God's placed around me, even the breath filling my lungs in this moment. You opened your eyes today because of God, in his mercy, placed another day into your hands. Apart from Christ, we can do nothing, John fifteen. I am not the owner of my life. I am a steward of the a life that belongs to God. My life is not my own, which means someday I will answer to the owner. And that the Christian life, listen to me, the Christian life is moving towards an accounting. 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 five went and once had traded with them, made five more, so also he had two made two more talents, and he who had received 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. The most important appointment of your life is yet to come. We will not be one second late for that appointment. You will not be able to reschedule. You will not be able to call in sick. There is no excuse that will work on that day. And pretending like that day is not going to happen will do nothing to change that appointment. And here's the reality of that day. What that appointment reveals carries the the weight of eternal significance. Look at what Paul says. It's all through the New Testament. It's the apostolic gospel, Second Corinthians five nine. So whether we are at home or away, Paul said we make it our aim or our primary dream to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or bad. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God. Every ordinary day, friends, is connected to that eternal day. So let's walk through this, okay? So scripture you guys all good? Scripture describes several scenes of judgment connected to the return of Christ and the completion of the age. There's several judgment events. Christians disagree, obviously, about how all these events fit together chronologically. But the central truth, friends, is unmistakable. Jesus is returning to this planet. He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him. Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, every rival kingdom will fall, and the entire creation will finally see what has always been true. The dead will be raised, the hidden things will be uncovered, every false judgment will be corrected, and every secret will be exposed, and no one will escape that day of judgment. No one. Now, after a long time, the master of his servants came and settled accounts with them. The judgment event that this parable is pointing towards is what Paul calls the judgment seat of Christ in 2 Corinthians. We just read it. And Paul said, We will all stand before the judgment scene, talking to believers. Here's the general idea. You guys ready? This is a judgment event in the age to come. That is reserved for born-again believers. And that judgment is not to determine where you're going to spend eternity. Because salvation is not a reward for a life well lived. Salvation is only a free gift of God that we receive through faith in the perfect, precious, sacred work of Jesus on the cross. This judgment, the judgment seat of Christ, is not to determine where. This judgment is an evaluation of the quality of the way we spent our lives and love for Jesus in this age to determine how we'll spend eternity. It's not about where, it's about how. Now the phrase judgment seat is the Greek word bima seat, which was super common phrase in the in the ancient world. Everybody would have understood what Paul was talking about when he said, We're gonna stand before the bhima seat of Christ. The bhima seat's a raised platform where a group of judges would be seated, and in a city like Corinth, where athletics were woven into the culture, that Paul's language would have triggered everybody's minds. They would have thought about, ⁓ this is what happens after somebody runs a race. The athlete would appear before the Bima seat and the judges would evaluate how they ran their race and then reward them according to that evaluation. The Bima seat is a place of evaluation and reward. You guys following me? But at the same time, friends, we cannot reduce this down to a Christian awards banquet where everybody gets a participation trophy. The one examining your life and my life on that day is the judge of heaven and earth, the Lord of heaven and earth. His evaluation will be complete. He will not nothing will be exaggerated, nothing will be minimized, nothing will be misjudged, nothing will be overlooked. Every motive will be uncovered, every hidden compromise will be exposed, every act of self-promotion will lose its disguise, and every work will be From for human applause will be shown for what it was. Some who appeared first will be last, and some who appeared last will be first. Some who were celebrated here may suffer loss there, and some who were almost entirely overlooked here may receive extraordinary commendation there. Paul says it again, 1 Corinthians 3 8. Each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which was laid, which is Christ Jesus. Now, if anybody builds on that foundation with gold, silver, precious stone, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest for the day. We'll disclose it because it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test what sort of work. Each one is done. If the work that anybody has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anybody's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. Alright, I know will offer Sunday morning first service. Let's keep going. See the both realities there? He himself will be saved and he will suffer loss. Saved, but suffered loss. Which means it's possible, friends, to arrive in eternity genuinely saved, yet discover that much of what consumed our earthly life had very little eternal weight. We will not just appear before the judgment seat, we will be revealed at the judgment seat. That day we'll remove every filter, every religious performance, every excuse, every misunderstanding. Whatever is true about how we love Jesus with our lives will come to light in his presence on that day. This is supposed to sober us. To one he gave five, to another two, to another one, each according to his ability. Then he went away. He would receive five, went and trade, he received two, made two more, he had received one, hid it, and after a long time the master of those servants came and accounts were settled. Couple things. First one we will only be evaluated based on what God entrusted us. To one he gave five, to another two, to another one. The master doesn't distribute equally, but he does distribute intentionally. God has given each person in this room, in the universe, a unique assignment based on their capacities. A certain measure of gifting, certain opportunities, relationships, a particular family setting, a particular generation, cultural setting. Degree of influence, financial resources, physical capabilities, emotional bandwidth. None of us received everything, but none of us received nothing either. Jesus will not evaluate your life without considering the life he gave you. No part of your story will be missing from his evaluation. Which means you don't need the largest ministry, you don't need the greatest income, the loudest personality, the biggest opportunity, the most impressive story, or the widest influence. You only need to become faithful with what is yours to carry. Number two, God will not evaluate us based on the size of our footprint, but by the faithfulness of our response to Him. Heaven does not measure the size of the outcome. Heaven measures the heart response to what has been entrusted. The master in the parable does not praise the first servant for having the largest result. He praises them for being faithful. And he doesn't diminish the second servant for producing less. He recognizes that the servant responded wholeheartedly to what had actually been placed into his hand. Earth sees four and ten, Jesus sees faithfulness and faithfulness. And that's good news, friends, for me at least, because you could be have the least visible gift. You could have the smallest platform, the very little money, no recognition, no public ministry, no impressive title. But if your heart is responding with all and love for Jesus, on that day, God will call your life great and you will be fully rewarded. You will stand at the Bima seat and receive an eternal reward because of your heart response to Jesus in love according to the abilities He gave you. Our lives are on a trajectory of greatness if we want them to be, regardless of life situations, circumstances. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them, and he who had received five came forward, bringing five more, saying, Master, you delivered to me five talents, here I've made five more. His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant, you've been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of the Lord. The master returns, the accounting takes place, the servant's stewardship is examined, and then something happens that we don't talk a lot about. The servants are rewarded accordingly. Eternal rewards. We don't talk much about this, but Jesus did. Jesus returned to this subject again and again and again and again. He regularly placed the reality of eternal rewards before his followers. Not just as an interesting detail about eternity, but as motivation for holiness and sacrifice and generosity and endurance and faithfulness. He wanted his disciples to understand, listen to me, church. Obedience is costly now, but it will have a full payoff in the age to come. Now if you're like me, I I guess I just sort of assumed eternity was one big identical reward for everybody. Welcome to heaven, you get a car, and you get a car, you get a car, everybody gets a red car. Same experience, same reward, but that is not the picture that Scripture gives us. We will not sit around with nothing to do. We will participate with Jesus in the life of his eternal kingdom in the age to come. And the way we live now is preparing us for how we will participate then. Eternal reward is not Jesus just randomly handing out prizes. This is God entrusting greater participation in his eternal kingdom to those who were formed through faithful participation in this life. Present faithfulness is not wasted, friends. It will become it's preparation for future participation. But eternal rewards isn't just increased responsibility. This is also deeply personal. In a sentence, eternal rewards are Jesus openly expressing how he feels about the way we loved him in this life. In other words, Jesus delights in making it known for eternity how he feels about the way you loved him. Every act of love that seemed too small to matter. Every ordinary moment offered to God in sincerity. Jesus sees it, he remembers it, and Jesus says, None of it will lose its reward. The world may never know what it cost you. People may never recognize what you carried, the result may never become visible in your lifetime, but heaven does not overlook your sincere love. For eternity, Jesus wants us to know that your life choices in love for Him did not go unnoticed. You've been faithful over little, and I will set you over much. Okay, let me close. Charity, you can come. There's a a young man, his name was William Borden. Anybody ever heard of him? guy. Chris Bryant. It's not surprising. This guy's a walking encyclopedia. But Borden, he was born into a ⁓ extremely wealthy American family, eighteen eighty seven. This guy had instant access to the kind of life that most people will spend their entire lives trying to build and accumulate. He could have lived comfortably. He could have built an empire, business empire, he could have, you know, protected the family fortune and spent his life celebrated by people impressed by his name. His society naturally expected a young boy like that, wealthy, well-connected young man, to pursue business and influence and comfort and all of that. But while he was traveling the world as a young man, he became deeply affected by the spiritual condition, physical needs of what he saw overseas, other countries. And something started to shift in this young man's life. How many knows sometimes the greatest competition to the will of God, it's not obvious sin. Sometimes it's a perfectly respectable life built without surrender. This young man would eventually go on. He studied at Yale and he studied at Princeton. And in those years he became convinced God is calling me to take the gospel to Muslims in South and Northwest China. When he began to share that news with his friends and his family, he was accused of this, and I quote throwing yourself away as a missionary. But regardless of those who didn't support his decision, Borden pressed on. He was confident that God was calling him to pour out his life on the missions. So in December 1912, Borden sailed for Cairo, Egypt. And there he was planning to study Arabic and Islam and then continue on into China. He prepared, he prayed. He had surrendered, he had given up everything to follow God's direction, God's guidance for his life. But he never makes it to China. Just a few months after he arrived in Cairo, he contracted spinal meningitis and on April 9th, 1913, he died. He was twenty-five years old. He never reached the people group he'd spent years preparing to serve. And I can imagine, right, the people who are on the outside looking into his life might have thought, man, what a what a waste. All that money, all that education, all that potential, all that preparation. And he died before he even got there? What a what a waste. Here's the question I want I want you to wrestle with this morning. Was this young man's life a waste? The answer depends entirely on which day you use to evaluate it. What if the greatest tragedy is not bored and died young after surrendering everything to Jesus? What if the greater tragedy is living a long, comfortable life while giving Jesus the bare minimum? What if the tragedy is not his life was poured out? What if the greater tragedy is preserving our lives so carefully that we actually never become an offering? Maybe the greatest danger is we'll spend our life on things that cost us everything and matter for almost nothing in the light of eternity. You can still visit his grave today. It's in Cairo still. And at the bottom of his gravestone are these words. Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life. Your eyes all through this place. The conviction of the Spirit has already been touching hearts. You're seeing areas, spaces. Wasting the one life on things that matter little for eternity. He's highlighting right now, he's putting his eyes of fire on that specific thing, that space, that place, that relationship. Sweep it under the rug, let let it go, let him go there. Sorry for the thing that I've made it. the gift of repentance as he highlights that thing. Let it move you. Let the goodness of God lead you to repentance. I saw people who had put things on the back burner for a day for a for another day that you know God is saying today. I saw businessmen packing up everything and moving their families. You know it's in your heart, but you're putting it off and putting it off and moving on, pretending like it's not there, but it's there, it's him. Jesus. This according to your will. We want to follow you wherever you go. Stand with me today. Charity, would you just lead us? Let's lift our hands together as we close this morning. Lift them up to the Lord as a sign of surrender. You can This world This word Chees. This world Here I am Lord. ⁓ Send us. I don't need anything else. You are my one. We will follow the Lamb wherever he goes. ⁓ I don't want. Come on, let's lift our hearts as we declare. I don't need anything else. You You are I don't need anything else. T So You can have all this world. You can have This one Thank you for your ministry, Holy Spirit. ⁓ Thank you for your light that searches the deep places. pray today as we go from this place. God that your presence would rest upon us a tangible, tangible way, a weightiness of God upon every life as we go. Give us eyes, eyes to see, ears to hear. I pray the blessing of the Lord over your life, the favor of God over your life, the goodness of God around every corner, that his mercy and goodness would follow you in Jesus' name. And the church said, Amen. Bless you guys. Have a great weekend.

Matthew 25:14 Matthew 25:14