Use your gifts (Matthew 25:14-30)

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.” (Matthew 24:42)

Last week we saw that Advent is a season for making sure we are ready. Not just to celebrate Jesus’ first coming at Christmas, but more importantly to be ready for when he returns again to bring both judgement and a new heaven and new earth. During this time we are encouraged to think about whether we are living lives that will please Jesus he returns. One of the questions I said we need to consider is: “Am I using the gifts and talents God gave me as I should?”

Use your gifts (Matthew 25:14-30)

Dragon’s Den:

Have you ever seen the programme, Dragon’s Den? The basic idea of the show is that you have five or six very wealthy investors who are looking for small entrepreneurial companies to invest in. These are the dragons. In each episode a handful of entrepreneurs come before them and try to persuade them to invest in their company, to help them to grow it and make it successful.

What the ‘Dragon’s care about’ is making a profit on their money. So, if they are not persuaded your company will be successful then you leave with nothing. But if they are persuaded that you will be successful, they will entrust you with a large lump sum in exchange for ownership of a percentage of the company. Confident that they will eventually receive more money in return.

An Entrusted Life

We like to think that our life is our own. But I want to invite you to see your life differently. It is not your own. Who you are and all that you have has been entrusted to you by God.

It is a radical idea, but it makes sense if we understand God to be the Creator of the world. After all, if I build something or create something, then I would expect people to see it as belonging to me. I would have the right to sell it on to someone else or do with it what I like. Why hasn’t God the same right over us as our Creator?

This idea is fundamental to the Bible, but it is expressed powerfully at the start of Psalm 24:

“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.” (Psalm 24:1-2)

So just as the investors of Dragon Den will at some point come and settle accounts with those they have invested in and expect to receive more money back than they have invested, so the Bible says that one day, God will want to settle accounts with us and expect to receive back more than he has entrusted to us.

That is the point, Jesus is making in the story he tells in Matthew 25:14-30. It comes as series of parables all designed to encourage us to be ready for when Jesus returns to judge the world. Something Jesus says that could happen at any time, so we always need to be ready.

The Key to the Story:

To understand the point Jesus is making, we need to understand what the elements in the story stand for. So let’s look at the key to the story. 

• The Master = Jesus

He is going away, but will come back one day to settle accounts, to see what his servants have done with what he has entrusted to them.

• The Talent = What is entrusted to us

When we hear the word, ‘talent’, we often think of people’s abilities and skills. We might say he is a very talented painter or musician for example. That meaning of the word, ‘talent’ has actually developed from this story.

However, to the people first hearing this story and for the first people reading Matthew’s gospel, ‘a talent’ was literally a very large amount of money worth about 6,000 denarii. One denari was worth the days wages of a labourer. In modern terms a talent is about half a million pounds. Two talents is a million pounds and five talents is two and a half million pounds. The servants in the story are being entrusted with very large sums of money, much more than the investors give out on dragon’s den.

So, what does Jesus mean this large sum of money to refer to? The story does not make it clear, so I think it is best to see it as referring to all that God has entrusted to us. That will include our skills and abilities, it will also include our personalities, our bodies, our possessions, our money and even the family and relationships we are blessed with. Ultimately, everything belongs to God.

• The First Two Servants = Those who seek to grow God’s kingdom

The first two servants then stand for those who live lives, that want to make the most of what God has entrusted to them to expand what belongs to God.

• The Third Servant = Those who refuse to grow God’s kingdom

The third servant, however, has a completely different attitude. He buries the money. This stands for those who do not want to do anything with all that God has entrusted with them to grow God’s kingdom.

The Final Outcome:

The focus of the story is on what happens when the Master returns. Jesus wants us to be ready for his return, so he tells this story, both as an encouragement and as a warning.

The Encouragement:

When the Master returns, the first two servants report to him that while he has been away they have each doubled the amount he has entrusted to them.

Notice, that although they were not given the same amount originally and they made different amounts of profit to each other, God, nonetheless rewards them in exactly the same way. God does not care so much about the level of success, he understands that some are capable of achieving a lot more than others. What he cares about is that we are faithful with what we are entrusted with. It is the faithfulness not the success that is rewarded.

Secondly, notice the encouragement and generosity of God. As reward for their faithful service, God gives each three things:

Firstly, praise. We all like to be praised by others and as a general rule the more important the person praising you the better. After all if your next door neighbour tells you, “Well done, great job” that is one thing, but if you receive a letter of praise from the king then that is something far more wonderful. How much more wonderful, then to hear the God of the whole universe, the king of kings say to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” That is the praise Jesus says we will receive for all that we have done for God in this life. Isn’t that encouragement in itself to serve God now.

 Secondly, promotion. The two servants are told, that having been faithful with a little, they will be put in charge of much more. Remember the amounts they were given were millions of pounds. So, the promise is to have huge responsibilities. This is a hint, that eternal life, is not so much like retirement as taking on even greater and more fulfilling work.

Thirdly, pleasure. The servants are invited to share in their master’s joy. To become part of a happy, joyful and wonderful team in God’s eternal kingdom.

All of this is deep encouragement to make the most of what God has entrusted us with and live to serve him in this life.

The Warning:

But alongside the encouragement, Jesus gives a warning. The third servant decides to bury the treasure entrusted to him, rather than work to invest it. He says he does it, because he is afraid of the master. He is afraid of failure, so he does not try.

 But this attitude is wrong for three major reasons:

Firstly, as we have seen the Master’s expectation was that the money be used to make more money. If you have half a million pounds, you do not bury it, you invest it to make more money.

Secondly, as we have also seen, the Master is incredibly generous towards those who do seek to make the most of what is entrusted to them. If we are seeking to be faithful, we have no reason to be afraid.

Thirdly, what he should have been afraid of was being judged for not even trying. If the investors on Dragon’s Den discovered that those taking their money do nothing with it, then they will be furious – they could have given it to someone who would seek to grow it.

We are all entrusted with so much by God. If we act as though we have no responsibility to use it for God’s purposes, to advance God’s kingdom in this life, then we are making a mockery of God’s will for us. If we do that in this life, Jesus warns that when it comes to his return, rather than praise, promotion and pleasure, we will lose the little we have and be locked out from God’s eternal kingdom and joy. Avoid this at all costs.

What to do with what is entrusted to us?

So, if we are to heed Jesus’ encouragement and warning, how can we live as good and faithful servants? Put simply we need to use what we have for God’s purposes.

 That means developing our gifts and talents, through hard work in our studies when we are at school and beyond.

It means doing our jobs, as though we were doing them for Christ. Do them for the good of others, rather than just as a way to make a wage. We need to seek to make a positive impact on the workplace, whilst being known as a Christian, so that seeing your good works, people may come to praise God.

It means caring for our families, with the love and compassion of God and encouraging our children and others to follow Jesus themselves. That is what Jack and Hannah you are promising to do for Eloise today.

 It means supporting the more obvious aspects of God’s work in the church and Christian agencies through financial giving and service.

In short it means accepting that all that we have has been entrusted to us by God and using it for God’s purposes and glory, confident that one day, the king of the whole universe will say to us, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”