Parable of the Talents

Behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord. He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliverest unto me two talents. Behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.

His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord. Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawled. And I was afraid and went and hid thy talent in the earth, and lo, there thou hast that is thine.

His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant. Thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawled. Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.

But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Would you join me in prayer tonight? Our father, we come to you once again. Thank you again for the opportunity to meet together as the people of God and to study your word, to sing these songs of Zion, and to give our praise, our glory, Lord, our worship to you.

Lord, you are worthy and you deserve every thought and every word and every deed of our lives. And, Lord, as we study this passage, there are so many different ways and truths and principles that we can draw from this. Lord, we’re just taking one stab at this passage, but Lord, we ask your blessing to be upon it, not only upon the Scriptures as we hear them, but Lord, upon me as I try to explain and teach the Scriptures, and also upon your people as we all try to receive the Scriptures.

Lord, bless us with a heart that is inclined to receive these things and speak to us and lead us and prompt us and remind us of these truths that we might put them into practice in our lives, that we might be indeed good and faithful servants like your word says here. So guide us tonight, bless us in the study of your word and our fellowship and in everything that’s done, for we ask in Jesus’ name, amen.

Now, if you’ll notice, in the parable of the talents, this is one of the most frequently, I guess, taught passages of Scripture. It’s a go-to passage on a number of fronts. Like I said in my prayer, we’re just going to take one kind of view of it, if you will. We’re not trying to exhaust this passage or anything like that. I definitely couldn’t do that. But when we look at it, I think as we look at it, how it’s often handled, I think there’s something we need to be careful of.

As you saw in the message this morning about the ten virgins, the ten bridesmaids, if you will, and how that they, what was in view there was not, and I mentioned that this morning, was not how faithful they were. What was in view was primarily whether they got in or whether they didn’t, whether it was a matter of life and death, whether they had eternal life or whether they ultimately did not.

But in this passage, that’s not as much in focus, although it is mentioned because of verse number 30, which says, which is definitely a reference in that to final judgment, and how the doom of the wicked, if you will. And so it is mentioned in this passage, but there’s another aspect that is mentioned that was not in the one this morning, which is the idea of faithfulness.

Another thing that’s different between the two is that the passage about the parable of the ten virgins focuses on the coming of Christ. And you’ll see in our passage here, verse number 19 does mention the coming. It says, Now, in this passage, the coming of Christ and the nature of the coming of Christ is not so much in view, but what is in focus is what happens after that, which is the reckoning.

The reckoning. Because the coming of Christ and the judgment related to His coming, after His coming, are put together in Scripture very often, both here and in the next one, which is the parable of the sheep and goats. And so that’s primarily what we’re dealing with tonight. But a lot of people, to be honest with you, get hung up on trying to define, like they did in the parable of the ten virgins, they get hung up trying to define exactly what each element means, and sometimes they miss the overall point of it because they’re trying so hard to define each thing.

What do I mean by that? Well, oftentimes people get hung up in the fact that there are three servants. And because of that, they view the servants in this passage as, well, actually, they assume that the servants being described here, the three servants are supposed to represent three believers. Right? Three people, three Christians, if you will, to use just kind of loose terminology. And so they assume that.

And so that’s fine when you had the first two, but that’s a little bit problematic when you get down to the third. Anybody know why? Well, because in verse 30, he’s thrown into the lake of fire, and that’s a bad thing. That’s also not something that is possible for a child of God. Okay, everybody, you were right with me on that. We got that nailed down. Exactly.

for a person that has eternal life to ever have anything but eternal life. Otherwise it’s not eternal. And we could go on and on and on into that truth. But we’re just going to keep it there. So when we presume that the servants in this passage represent believers or, if you will, Christians, it creates trouble because you see these servants cast, this last servant cast into outer darkness where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And that implies that a person, if they are not faithful to God, faithful to Christ when Christ comes, will ultimately lose their status. But the problem is not that. The problem is assuming that the servants represent Christians. Okay, that’s the key. Because there’s nowhere in the text that forces that. But it is an assumption simply because of the word servant. But see, when we pull back and we look at the broader context of chapter 25, especially the virgins, and this parable, what we notice is it’s not so much the Lord is trying to minutely define which each element is and what the talents represent and all that.

No, he’s giving a bigger picture. And the bigger picture is when Christ comes, there are going to be people that are going to go into his kingdom having been faithful, right? And then when Christ comes, there are going to be people who are, like we saw this morning, shut out. And there is something to be said about the fact that God has given things to people that he is going to hold them accountable for.

And that’s what we’re going to look at tonight. So I would just caution you not to be too picky to try and define what each element means, but to look at the bigger picture. Which is primarily, unless you have good reason, when you study the Bible, unless you have a good reason to define each element. And there are examples of that, like in the parable of the sower.

Each element the Lord tells you, well the seed is the word of God, and he defines it out. But sometimes the parables are not about that. They’re about the big picture. And in this case, he doesn’t tell us what each element is, so we just look at the big picture, and especially in reference to the coming of Christ, where this relates. Now what you see in this is in verse number 15, or verse 14 rather, the Bible says, for the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.

So that’s, again, I’ll just reiterate, so this is the reason why people say, oh this is Christians because it says, his own servants. Let me ask you a question, is there anybody on earth that does not belong to God? And this actually is related directly to the point of the parable. Is there anybody on earth that is not God’s? There’s nobody. Every single person living and breathing, or whoever has, is God’s.

Right? Is that true, or is that false? Yeah, whether they accept it or not, the Muslims are God’s, the Buddhists are God’s, the Catholics are God’s, the Baptists are God’s. The atheists are God’s. So you see what I’m saying? That’s a presumption, but it’s a little bit forced upon the text. But anyway, notice, he delivers unto them his goods, verse 15, and unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, every man according to his several ability, and straightway took his journey.

Now, a talent, now when we say a talent, you say, oh, Sam, he has a talent. Sam’s a, he’s a good singer, he can sing. And so, Sam has a talent to sing. David has a talent in his analytical mind. That’s a talent, an ability, right? Or some of you might have other talents that you have, like special abilities. But here’s what’s interesting, that’s not what the word talent means.

In fact, the way we use the talent, like that person can play the, like your kids, they can play the cello, right? Is it cello? Yeah, it’s a cello. I don’t think a bassoon, I don’t even know what all that is. A bassoon is not a stringed instrument, I assume, right? Okay, yeah, I got that wrong. Bass, bass is a stringed instrument. So you look at that and you say, well, that child has musical talent, or whatever.

But actually, that’s not what we’re talking about in talent, so don’t get that confused. That’s actually kind of a derivative of this. So because people have preached on this for so long, over the centuries, they’ve come to apply the word talent to mean ability, like God has given you abilities. But that’s not what it is. That came out of this passage, but in the passage the word talent refers to a unit of weight, like pounds or kilograms.

That’s what it’s actually talking about. Specifically, it’s talking about a unit of weight that is equivalent to a weight of silver or gold for monetary purposes. So like in Britain, like we don’t have this now because we have fiat currency, but they would have a pound sterling. Where does that name come from in Britain? A pound sterling. It’s supposed to be the weight of silver, right? And it used to be the US had that gold, you know, a dollar represented a certain amount of gold, so it represented a measurement of weight of a valuable metal.

That’s exactly what we’re talking about here. And at this time in history, of course, the word talent has varied as far as how heavy it was, but at this point in history, a pound, a talent, was about 75 pounds. That’s a lot. That’s a lot. Now, what do I mean? 75 pounds of a precious metal. Now, you’re talking big money now. How much is gold these days?

How much per ounce? Is it four? I thought it was like 1500 or something. Whatever it is, it’s a lot of money. Okay? 16 ounces in a pound, 75 of those. That’s a lot of gold, right? And silver is expensive too. So in this period in time in Judea, the talent was about 75 pounds. And so if you use one talent as a weight for money, as a measurement of money, it equaled approximately 6000 denarii.

Okay, denarii, what’s that? That is the Latin coin, that is the Roman coin that we have in our Bible, this referred to as a penny that was given for one day’s work. So one talent is equal roughly to 6000 days of labor. And he gave them five talents, two talents, and one talent. So of course I had to do some calculations, right? Of course I had to.

So if you made, you know, what is average single person income in this area, it’s going to be in the range of $60,000, right? Ish. That’s statistically. Okay? So $60,000 and if you work five days a week all year, that’s 313 days. So 60,000 divided by 313 gives you about $191 per day. The first man was given 6000 times 5, $30,191. That’s the equivalent. Here’s the point.

The first man was given roughly the equivalent of $5.7 million. The second man was given roughly equivalent of $2.29 million. Third man was given roughly the equivalent of $1.15 million. These are not small amounts of money. And this is the whole point. This is the whole point. The point is not that we can nail down to the scent exactly how much a talent is. The point is he did not give them trifles.

He gave them large sums of money. So that tells you something about the Lord in this parable. The Lord in this parable is a rich guy, right? He has a lot of money. And which is, is that not so fitting? Of course the Lord refers to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the owner of all things. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He owns everything.

And here’s the thing. So he takes these talents and he commits this money, large sums of money, to his servants, to those who are supposed to serve him. He commits them. He says he delivered unto them his goods. Okay, so follow me now because we’re going somewhere with this. So I don’t know if he wrote a check. Probably weighted out in a balance. That’s what they did back then.

And so he probably had a scale and he weighed out the coins, I guess, on the scale. And he handed, I’m assuming, like handed wheelbarrow style probably has a lot of coins. So he handed it over to the servants. Now let me ask you a question. Once he handed that money over to the servants, whose money did that then become? Ah, see I tricked you. It’s not the servants.

It’s still the Lord’s. See, that’s why the first verse, verse 14, if you look what it says, it says delivered unto him, what does it say? His goods. So in verse 15, he gives them five and two and one talent and they walk away and they don’t have anything else. In other words, they have zero. But what they do have is they have money that belongs to their Lord that has been committed to their trust for using.

But it’s still their Lord’s. They still have zero. That’s so important to learn. They still have zero. What they do have was given to them. Not even given to them, not a gift, but was committed to them, but it’s still actually the Lord’s. The Lord’s. Everybody with me? So I’ll repeat it if you’re not with me. Okay, you’re with me. Okay, good. Okay.

And so after he had committed this money to them, verse 19, after a long time, so he leaves and he’s going a long way, going far away, he’s going to be gone a long time. Now if you look at several places in this passage, notice verse 16, he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same and made them other five talents. 17, likewise, he that had received two, he also gained other two.

And then you go down to verse number 20, when the Lord of those servants returns, the first servant says, I have gained beside them five talents more. The second servant says, he says, I have gained two other talents beside them. And so you see this repetition of this word gain. And this is actually the, this is the whole point of the parable. To gain is the goal.

Because remember, the things that the Lord has given to them or committed to them are not theirs. They were given to them for the express purpose of gain. Gain to whom? Gain to the Lord, not gain to them. It never was going to be gain to them because they’re just servants. It was going to be gain to the Lord. And that’s why we see this gain thing repeated over and over again.

You see, this is the key requirement to the talents. The key requirement of the Lord is that they were to use the talents to benefit the Lord. It means they were supposed to turn those things which were committed to them by the Lord into more of the same. And those things which they gained were to benefit the Lord. In other words, the money that they received was not given to them to be used simply for their own pleasure and gratification.

There was an end involved. And so we, just to reiterate, those things then that were given to them were not theirs. They were the Lord’s. Now let me ask you something. Now consider the way that you view your life. Consider the way you view your life. For our purposes tonight, I don’t think there is a, when you read this parable, is there not a very strong kind of predisposition to view the talents as abilities, right?

Because the word talent, you know, it’s like equal to ability in our mind. That’s what we think of. But try to uncouple that from your brain and think talent means money. Just say dollars, okay, or gold, or whatever, just to kind of uncouple that from your brain. Now I want to ask you this. What has God given you? And I want you to widen, in your mind, widen the search to as wide as you can possibly think.

What has God given you? Well one thing He’s given you is time. The fact that you’re here means you have time, right? He’s given you intellect. I mean we’re casting as wide of an ed as possible. Anything, see these talents, this money, doesn’t just represent our abilities. And sometimes we can kind of skirt out of it, skirt out of the whole point by saying well I don’t really have any abilities.

But no, no, no, no, we’re not talking about that. What has God given you? We’ve got time. You have an intellect. You have a mouth. You can speak. I mean you think of any, where you’re born, you’re born into a country where you have a large measure of liberty. You’ve got choices. You’ve got money that’s been given to you. You said well I earned, no you didn’t.

These servants were given everything they have. What else do you have? You’ve probably got a family. You’ve got a wife. You’ve got a husband. You’ve got children maybe. You’ve got things that have been given to you, things that you have in your life. And you can go on and on and on. You could include abilities, special abilities like an analytical mind or musical ability. You can kind of wrap that because that’s part of the things you have.

Here’s the key thing you need to remember is all of those things were given to you and given to me, all of them, everything we have was given to us by God. When you came into this world, you came to this world like you came to this world as a naked little baby. Even the breath that you took on the day you were born was given to you by God.

That’s the thing we have. Just be honest. Do you view everything in your life like that? On a conscious level, we don’t. Now if I were to ask you theologically, brother Jim, is everything you have given to you by God, well of course. But on a day to day basis, do we consciously think of that? No. We think the money in my bank is my money. My car is my car.

My body is my body. My words are my words. My wife is my wife. My husband is my husband. My kids are my kids. That’s the way we, my job is my job. My intellect is my intellect. This I’m just telling you, what we say and what we do are different. There’s a disconnect. The reality though and what the Lord wants to drive home and it’s clear in this parable is literally everything we have, top to bottom, big and small, everything we have is something that we have received from God.

Everything. Would we not do better if we lived in the conscious reality of that truth? Okay, building upon that, just like these servants and this Lord, if everything that they have belonged to God and He gave it to them, remember He didn’t give it to them like cut the strings, no. He committed it to them. Okay, so where does that put you and put me? That means that first of all, everything that we have was we have received from God.

But the second thing it means that it was not given to us as a gift, but it was given to us as something that is committed to us, as a trust. And so everything that you have, top to bottom, anything that is included, your life, your breath, your intellect, your words, your money, your house, your family, every single thing without exception, the Lord has given it to you with the express purpose of His love.

That those things might be used to benefit Him. You know what the Lord is doing here? The Lord is laying claim to every part of us. Well so much for the easy Christianity that demands nothing, but instead of the easy Christianity instead seeks to entertain, instead seeks to just please us. No, the Lord, remember these servants had nothing until these things were committed to them by the Lord and then when it’s all said and done they come down to the reckoning and what is the Lord doing?

And I’m getting ahead of myself, forgive me, but what does He do? He demands of them what you did with the things I gave you, which is all they ever had. This is just not how we naturally look at our life, is it? We view what we have as ours. Listen now, we view what we have as ours. God views what we have as His. And the proof of that is in the day of reckoning that we read in the parable.

The Lord didn’t say, what did you do with your talents? What did you do with my talents? We view our things as ours, He views our things as His. Why? Because they are. They came from Him and they were merely committed to us as a trust. They were not given to us as ours. God gives, now listen, the whole idea is to gain, to profit. In fact, verse 30, He says, cast ye the unprofitable servant.

The Lord expects us to take all of those things in our life, big and small, and to use them and to turn them into something good. He gives them to us and then He wants us to turn those into good things that glorify Him and good things that please Him and good things that benefit Him from the small things to the big things. Think about this. God commits to us, think about all the things that you have, you have received.

God commits things to us, God commits to us truth. We come in contact with truth in our life. And God wants us and expects us to multiply that into faith. God gives us a family which we multiply into a godly remnant, a godly people. God gives us children which we then multiply into believers on His name. God gives us wealth which we then multiply into treasures in heaven by that wealth.

God gives us a tongue which we multiply into praise and truth for God. God gives us a mind which we then multiply into exploring the glories of God. God gives us a Christian family, that is we’re born into a Christian family, which we then multiply into salvation. Right? I mean, are there not many people that are born into a Christian, a godly family who are not saved?

Yeah, absolutely. You see, you know what that is? That is a waste of what God has committed to us. Is it not? If I’m born into a Christian family, I wasn’t, but had I been born into a Christian family and then in the end I’m cast into outer darkness, you know what I’ve done? I have squandered the thing that has been committed to me. Because the Lord expected me to take this thing that He had given to me and to multiply into something good and profitable to Him.

In this case, the first and foremost thing is that I might be saved. Right? But we sadly know that doesn’t always happen like that. You see, here’s what I want you to see. What I’m talking about here, that everything these servants have came from their Lord. This is the basis for verses like this. You know these verses, but now I want you to, if you can, rethink about these verses in light of this parable.

First Corinthians 1031, “’Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.’” Why does God say do all to the glory of God? Because literally everything, big and small, minute to large, everything came from Him. And so He says, “’Then everything is to be to the glory of God.’” You see, turning that into something that glorifies God. Colossians 3 verse 17, “’And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.’” So here’s what I want you to see.

I know we view our life as ours, but God does not. He really does view our life as His, not just in word, but in truth, in actuality. And He holds us to that. And that’s why He says He lays claim to every heartbeat and every breath and every word. And I say that, listen, there’s not a soul in this room that properly uses everything that we have been given.

Nobody in this room exists. Only the Lord Jesus Christ Himself did that. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself used every breath and every heartbeat of His life to the glory of His Father. But we’re not Him. We fall short of the glory of God. That’s no excuse. But what I’m trying to get you to see is that God indeed has laid claim over our whole life. Now you’ll notice in verse number 15, He gave, under one He gave five talents to another two to another one, every man according to his several ability.

So the first thing I want you to see is He did not commit the same amount of money to each person. Now this is going to rub everybody in this society the wrong way. He did not do it equally or fair. Why not? That ain’t none of our business. That’s way above our pay grade by a million times. The Lord doesn’t have to make everything fair. Indeed He doesn’t.

He doesn’t. Okay, so He gives one five, one two, one one. Okay why did He make it different? Why doesn’t it just make it even? Everything’s now about not equality but equity, equity. Everything must come out the same. Even if we have to cheat some, it’s got to come out the same. The Lord’s not interested in that. He gave one five, one two, one one according to their ability.

So the reason He gave the one five is because that man had greater ability so He committed to him that money that matched his ability. The man that got two got two because it matched his ability and one and so on. So here’s what that tells us. The guy that received five, the guy that received two, the guy that received one did not have the same ability.

Okay, let me put it to you like this. They were not all created equal. I know that somewhere in the Bible we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Okay, there is truth in that. That’s from the Declaration of Independence. But there is truth in that and that’s speaking to the value of man, mankind, right? But the value of man might be equal but man’s abilities are not.

Right? That’s just a fact. You know, you think of Samuel. Think of Samuel. Samuel Burgess. Sorry, those of you that don’t know, he’s got cerebral palsy. Severe cerebral palsy. Does Samuel Burgess have the same ability that you have? No. That’s just a fact of life. But has the Lord committed to Samuel Burgess some talents? Yeah. But they’re according to his ability. That’s the beauty of this. They’re according to his ability.

And you can see that the ability that a person has is something kind of innate to them. And so if a person has lesser ability it’s not their fault. You know, it’s not a fault. It’s just that’s the way that God made them in his wisdom. And so, and then that which then in their life, in that person’s individual life that the Lord commits to them will match that.

And so they will be accountable and they will reckon with the Lord based upon that. Not based upon what I get but based upon what the Lord has given them. So there’s an individual aspect to that. And you can see this, it makes it perfectly clear in the rewards of the two faithful servants. Look at verse number 20. So the man that received five talents, now he had greater ability so he got more talents.

Verse number 21, he had five and he turned five into five more. Okay, a hundred percent increase. And verse 21, his Lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things, enter thou in the joy of thy Lord. And then verse 22, the man with two came and he gained two more, also a hundred percent.

Verse 23, his Lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Let me ask you a question. Was there any difference in the reward and recognition of the Lord between those two servants? No. Now the amount they gained was different. The Lord’s not concerned with that because their ability was different.

Their ability was different and so what they had been committed was different. I’ll put it to you like this. You know there are people that are in some remote place in the other side of the world that do not have access to the truth that you and I have access to. Are they going to be held accountable for that which they have been given, the truth that they have been given as just focusing on one thing?

Yes. But will that accountability be as ours? No. No. But if they respond to that truth that they have been given as we respond to the truth that we have been given, the reality is that at the judgment seat of Christ that reward, if you will, is going to be similar. You know when I was a missionary one thing that was so frustrating is a lot of times the Cambodians, they just, Cambodian Christians just seem to have a very difficult time growing.

There’s just so many hindrances and barriers and even in society and their culture and so many hurdles to get over and it really just hamstrung them and handicapped them in their Christian walk. Well we don’t have those, right? If you’re a Christian for instance in China or you’re a Christian in Iran, you know your Christian life is probably a lot more difficult than yours is now and here.

Is that right? It is. But that’s part of the abilities that God has given to that individual. And so the Lord takes that into account when he goes to reckon with them. We see this truth in Romans 12, it says this, verse 6, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us. Whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith. So you see this, the gifts are different because the grace is different.

Verse, Ephesians 4, 7, but unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Big measure, big grace, little measure, little grace. It’s that simple. You see the difference between the first two servants and the last servant was that the first two servants gained something by their use of the money whereas the last servant gained nothing. Now take a peek if you would at 2 Corinthians chapter 10, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 12.

The Bible says this, 2 Corinthians 10, verse 12, for we dare not make ourselves of the number or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves, but they measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise. We will not boast of things without our measure. The idea that God had given Paul a certain measure which he expected Paul to fulfill which was different than the measure that he had given to others.

If that’s the case, why compare? Right? Why compare? Because we’re not all the same. So here’s the thing, you can’t look, I can’t look at another person and compare myself to them and say, well I’m not as good as them or I’m better than them. That is stupid and it’s not scriptural and it’s off base because God has not given the same grace to you as he has to me.

The person we need to be looking at is our Lord and what he has given to us. So this whole idea of comparison and you know the biblical term is emulating, that is trying to you know compete with one another is silly. It’s not scriptural and yet it drives many Christians, sometimes crazy. Continuing verse number 13, but according to the measure of the rule which God has distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto you, for we stretch not ourselves beyond our measure as though we reach not unto you, for we are calm as far as you also in preaching the gospel of Christ, not boasting of things without our measure.

That is outside of our measure, that is of other men’s labor. See he’s saying I refuse to compare myself with other people. I am bound to do according to what God has given me. There’s just a lot of freedom in that way of thinking. I’m not trying to compete with the next pastor, you’re not trying to compete with the next person, and that’s hard to do. We have to keep this in our mind.

Our stage in life, where we are, the gifts that God has given us, those things determine what we’re expected to do within the scriptural context, not what everybody else is doing. And so back in Matthew 25 as we finish it out, you can see the Lord’s reckoning, the Lord’s reckoning. He reckoneth, verse 19, he reckoneth with them. And that reminds us, this is just another way to say judgment.

Reckon means to count, he’s going to count the money. That’s what he’s doing. It reminds us that there is a day of reckoning in which our Lord will examine, it will happen, will examine the use of what he has committed to us. In other words, all these things that we’ve been talking about that are the things that God has committed to us as a trust, every one of them, every one of them will be brought up later.

Ecclesiastes 12-14, for God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. So there’s just a, this parable reminds us of the fact of a day of reckoning.

And that’s not all bad. In fact, and to the faithful, it was good. That was the basis for their rewards in the future. But then you have, we’ll close with this, the last servant. He stands out, sadly. Look at verse number 23, or verse 24 rather. Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man. Now stop one second.

He is not that. Do the first two servants think that this Lord is a hard Lord? No. You know why? Because they’ve been rewarded. In other words, the fact that this last servant calls the Lord and speaks of the Lord in the negative, in negative terms, says more about him than it does about the Lord. Right? You know God always appears mean to people who are in rebellion to him.

You know that. That’s just, you know. And that’s actually by design. To the foward, thou wilt show thyself foward. Right? That’s, you know, that’s why all these atheistic types, they absolutely hate God and they think he’s a tyrant. He’s not. But that’s how they think of him. Anyway, you see this last servant, he said, verse 24, reaping where thou hast not sown and gathering where thou hast not strawled.

And I was afraid, and when in hid thy talent in the earth, lo, there thou hast that is thine. Now for a long time I thought, well, that’s not bad. At least he didn’t lose it. But the whole purpose was not to not lose it. The whole purpose was to gain. Right? And he said, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not and gather where I have not strawled.

Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers. Then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath, and cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness, there should be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

You see, every person that God has created has been given many things by God. Large sums of money, like the talents. God has given us a lot of stuff. Christians and non-Christians alike, God has given us a lot of stuff. But many do nothing with those things that God gives them that benefit God. They are given truth, but they never believe. They’re given a family, but they make no effort to make that family into a family that glorifies God.

They’re brought up in a Christian home, but they end up in the lake of fire. You see, they’re not using, they have a mouth and they use it for cursing and anger and spite and hate. You see, they take all the things, they take the years of their life and they spend it on sin and wickedness. You see, that’s the same thing in the reverse. These things that God has given them, they do not use it to profit God and turn it into something good for him.

They’re born into a country where there’s basically perfect liberty to seek God at will, and they don’t, ever. They’re given a great intellect which they never use to seek God at all. So what does the Lord do? Here’s the key and we’re finished. Verse 28, take therefore the talent from him. Now what did this man have prior to when the Lord gave him the one talent? Nada.

He had nothing. And now what does he have? He has nothing. And so all the things, think about it now, what those talents represent, all the things that God has given to him in his life are now taken away. And he himself is cast into outer darkness. Man, what a terrible thought. What a terrible, he’s worse than when he started. Because at least when he started, he was given something in this life and now it’s all lost.

The Lord took it away because it was not used for God’s glory. You see, you see in this very stark way what I mean when I say the Lord lays claim on every single part of us that he has committed to us? Yeah, he does. Because this man was given things by God and when it came down to reckoning day, the Lord called him on every bit of it and took it away.

We say that’s mean. Well he gave it to him. It’s his. It’s his. You see, the talent that that last servant had that was taken away reveals that it was never his talent to begin with. It was committed to him as a trust to use. And when he didn’t use it, the Lord took it away and he’s punished. Man, it’s a sobering truth. But again, this is not just a Christian message, although there’s definitely principles and truths to the Christian, but this is a bigger message.

This is a message to people who aren’t necessarily believers. They’ve been given things by God too. Whether they use those to, of course, believe on Christ and then live for him or whether the Lord’s going to deal with that in the day of reckoning. Let’s pray.