So Talented -- Luke 25:14-31 • James Sutton

Speaking of which, we're also going to go to God's word. We're going to look this morning in Matthew chapter 25 verses 14 through 30. We are continuing our series on the apocalyptic advent. We have finished the Olivet discourse in Matthew. What follows is a series of parables. This isn't the first one, but we're going a little bit out of order, and I don't know that the order is that important, but all of these parables essentially point to the return of Christ.

So, as we listen to God's word from Matthew 25 verse 14 through 30, bear that in mind.

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 5 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 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 5 talents. Here I have made 5 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've made two talents more. And 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 had received the one talent came forward saying, master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. So I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours. But his master answered him, you wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed, then you ought to have 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 the one who has 10 talents. For to everyone who has will be more given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness in that place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. — Matthew 25:14-30

This ends the reading of God's word. Thanks be to God.

Well, I've got some encouragement for some of you and I know there are a lot of you in this congregation with little kids. There is a promised land. My wife and I turned out five kids in ten years, which means about every other year, we were turning one out. That was a decade of diapers and sleepless nights and sort of misery. But all along, we kept telling ourselves that one day we're going to get to a point where the kids will be old enough and we'll be able to leave them alone without a babysitter for a little while and we'll get a little time back. Well, I'm happy to say we have arrived at the promised land in the Sutton house. Katie and I have been enjoying these beautiful walks in the evening where we leave Josie in charge and we go for a short walk, maybe around the block, started around the block, maybe two blocks, and then coming back.

What's really great is there's this new technology called Amazon Alexa. We have Echo dots, I guess is what they're called. This isn't an ad, by the way. We have these Echo dots in every room in our house. So what we've discovered is that when we're on these walks and we're starting to come back, we start to think about all of the things that we want the kids to have done when we arrive—like showers or cleaning up the house. What we figured out is that I can use my phone and ask Alexa to make an announcement throughout my entire house saying, "Children, your parents are on their way home. We expect you to be clean and the house to be clean when we arrive." And what's been amazing? My kids have been doing it. It's amazing.

So those of you with little kids who feel like you're in the thick of it, here's the good news: one day you'll get to this point and it's just glorious when your kids start taking some responsibility.

These parables are kind of like Jesus giving us little Alexa echo dot announcements. I'm coming back, right? That's what these parables are meant to point us to. I'm coming back. And this parable, the parable of the talents, is one of my favorites.

It's a beautiful, beautiful story about this master who goes away and comes back and settles accounts with his servants. There are a couple of things that I want us to pull out given that we're in the season of Advent from this parable. It's a perfect Advent kind of parable. Three things I want to look at: how those with Advent eyes view the talents in this passage, how those with Advent eyes view their master, and thirdly, how those with Advent hearts rejoice. Those are our three points. So to begin with, how those with Advent eyes view the talents?

You may not know this, but the English word talent actually comes from this passage. When the Bible was translated into English, this word started being used in English. It hadn't been used really before. So when you think of talents, you think of skills or abilities or special ways of doing things. That's what talents are. That's what the English word means because people thought as they were interpreting this passage that Jesus was pointing to those things when he used talents as a metaphor.

But the literal word talent doesn't really have anything to do with abilities. It originally began as a term of weight. It was a measurement of weight, and it shifted into a measurement of money as people started to apply that weight to gold specifically. For example, in the Old Testament, when they talk about building the temple, right, they build this glorious lampstand. Most people think of the lampstand as this little tiny thing like the menorah—a little tiny thing that you maybe put on a table. It wasn't like that. It was ginormous. It looked like a tree. It was full size and branched out with all these different spaces for candles. That was the lampstand that was in the temple. And originally, when they built it, they built it out of a talent of gold. It was this huge hunk of gold.

So it started out as a weight and shifted into an understanding of money as people started to apply it to gold. That one talent—I'm not exactly sure what the equivalent weight would have been. But I do know that when they started using it as a term for money, a talent was essentially like twenty years' wages. That's how much gold this was. Twenty years' wages.

So you think about that guy who gets five talents in the story—that's a hundred years. That's a hundred years of money that he's been entrusted with. This is not a small sum. This is not like the master leaving and handing him a five-dollar bill or even a Ben Franklin, right? This is a huge chunk of cash.

Obviously, though, Jesus isn't using this just as terminology for cash. Jesus isn't saying, "Hey, I'm gonna leave you and I'm gonna give you all of this money." Money probably is included in what Jesus meant because money means more than money even in the way we use it daily. We've done a number of series where we've come through Jesus' teachings on money enough to know that our money really represents more than just our money. And in this passage, this is a metaphor for not just money but also all of the things that money represents.

Yes, your gifts and talents—it's essentially not just things that you possess, like your house, your car, your money, your finances, but also everything good that God's given you in this life. Your family, your ability to get up in the morning, my ability to go for a walk with my wife, right? All of the good things that God has given you are part of what is represented by the talents in this passage. It's really everything.

There's an early interpretation of this passage that suggested that what Jesus was doing here was criticizing the Pharisees and saying that specifically what Jesus had in mind was knowledge of God himself. An understanding of spiritual truth, an understanding of salvation, right? And in that interpretation, the servant who buries the talent is the Pharisees. They held on to this truth. They didn't spread it. They didn't share it, right?

But I think that the talents represent all of that. They represent spiritual truth, your family, your car, everything in this life that God has given you. Here's why: because one day, Jesus is gonna come back and we have to give it all back. We have to give an account for it. It's not gonna be just our money, right? But it's gonna be everything.

Everything from our money to our knowledge of God and of Scripture and of salvation. The second thing I want to tease out when we think about how those with Advent eyes view the talents is: who owns the talents? And this is going to be hard for us as Americans. Okay? Because in America, we're cowboys. You realize that? Like our big cultural kind of identity, as people think about America and the world, they think about cowboys because we're wildly independent. Right? We think of owning our own things. We love to talk about our rights and our privileges and the things that we own being ours, you know, our flag at stake. And that's because largely in our culture, we're a culture of landowners. Right? Not everybody, but a lot of people in our society have been able to buy land, to purchase land, and to make their own way in our country. And we think of ourselves as having these individual rights to do that. That's built into our government system and what we believe as Americans.

And so when we come across this parable, it's easy for us to think about the master giving these talents and us thinking, well, these are the things that we own. These are the things that are ours. But other cultures wouldn't view it that way because other cultures are more accustomed to things being owned by a monarch. You think about Europeans. Right? They weren't largely a culture of landowners. They understood that all of the things that they were working, all of the things that they were involved in, belonged to the king or the monarch. And so this concept of servanthood and a servant being entrusted with a large portion of a master's estate is something that they're a little bit more accustomed to.

I was reading this week—there was some clickbait article that I clicked on because I shouldn't have, but I do. I clicked on this thing because it said, "Here's a list of amazing things that Queen Elizabeth owns." And I'm like, I've been watching The Crown, so I'm like, oh, I wonder what Queen Elizabeth owns that I don't know about. I clicked on it. Most of the stuff was stuff you know about—like the castles. If you watch The Crown, you learn what she has. The dogs. She likes dogs and horses. But one thing that was surprising to me was that apparently Queen Elizabeth owns all of the geese on the River Thames. All of them. And once a year, there's this weird thing in England. It's weird to me. Maybe it's not weird to them, but this is my point. We're like, what? She owns all the what? And probably some of you anglophiles are going to come to me after this and say, hey, you don't really understand this thing, the geese thing, and explain to me what it is. But that's my point. I don't get it because I'm an American. We don't get this.

And here's what I want you to see from this: those of you with Advent eyes, those of you who are believers in Christ—everything that we have is his. I'm going to say that again because I don't think it sinks in. Everything that you have is his. I want you to think for just a moment: what are the things that you think you own? Right? This is meant to be like a Matrix moment where Morpheus says, "Do you think that's air you're breathing?" Do you think that's your air you're breathing? This is the point. Everything that you think is yours, that you think you have rights to, is his. Let that sink in. How would that change how you use some of the things that you so-called own in this life? Just think about it for the obvious—like the money and the house and the car. How does that impact how you use that? Is it yours?

Think about your time. That's something that is so dear to me, my time, because it's mine. Right? Guess what? It's not. Think about your job, the calling that God has given you, the abilities that he's given you to do that. You have goals, you have purposes, but is that job yours or is it his? And to the point of that early interpretation, think about all that you know about Scripture and about Christ. Oftentimes we think about that as it's ours. It's meant to give us personal assurance of salvation. But it's not just ours. It's his, and he's given it to us for a purpose.

Those with Advent eyes have a different view of the talents than the rest of the world. And it really changes the way that we look at things, doesn't it?

How Those with Advent Eyes View the Master

I want to switch now into how those with Advent eyes view the master. We could stop right here.

And in fact, most of the time when I have heard this passage preached, this is where it stops. The talents aren't yours. They're God's, so you better invest them because he's coming back. You better be faithful, right? Because that's the distinction between the servants in this passage. You have two faithful servants and one unfaithful servant. Do not be the unfaithful servant because he winds up in a really bad place.

That's the point. And to some degree that is the point. But I want you to see that the real problem of the unfaithful servant isn't his unfaithfulness as much as it is his understanding, his view of the master.

The Wicked Servant's View of the Master

First of all, let's look at how the wicked servant views the master. If you look at verse 24, he spells it out for us. He says:

"He's a hard man, reaping where he did not sow, gathering where he cast no seeds." — Matthew 25:24

In other words, the servant's saying, "Hey, I do all the work and you get all the benefit." That's his view of the master.

There's a movie that came out in the eighties called Glengarry Glen Ross. There's one scene in the movie with Alec Baldwin where he just steals the whole movie. It's really the only part of the movie worth watching. He shows up with three salesmen in an office talking about leads and trying to make sales. Alec Baldwin shows up and cusses these guys out. It's intense. He walks in and one guy's pouring a cup of coffee and he's like, "Put the coffee down. Coffee is for closers." And then he goes on this tirade about how all these guys are wimps and how they gotta get to work if they're really gonna succeed in life.

And that, in essence, is the wicked servant's view of God. And if we stopped preaching after that first point, that might be your view of God, right? Get busy investing. Get to work because I'm coming back and I'm the master and I'm cracking the whip. That is the wicked servant's view of the master.

Why Does He View Him This Way?

There's nothing in the parable that indicates that the master is cruel or this way that he describes him other than the servant's description of him. Perhaps he viewed him this way because he saw his work as his own, which gets back to my first point where we talked about everything being God's. This guy was a servant. He worked for the master, but he saw his work as his own. In other words, "I don't work for you, I work for me." That was part of his problem—perhaps he viewed his work as his own and his master's expectation that the servant would actually work as a servant seemed unreasonable to him.

But in truth, the master had given him everything. Servants lived with their masters in the ancient world. Masters provided for their every need. And in fact, this master had given him twenty years of wages—a talent of gold to invest. Doesn't seem like a slave driver. Doesn't seem like a wicked person.

But perhaps the wicked servant saw the master this way because of comparison. It would be easy to see that. He looked at the other two servants and saw this guy who got five, this guy who got two, and "I only got one. Well, that hardly seems fair."

You ever do that in life? You ever play the comparison game? You start looking at where people have achieved on their work trajectory and where you've achieved and you start to feel like that's unfair. And maybe it is unfair. Maybe something in this world has happened. But maybe you view it as unfair because God is involved. Perhaps that's what the wicked servant is doing. Perhaps that's what's informing his view of the master. Perhaps he's playing the comparison game.

But I wanna point out that when we play the comparison game, it really robs us of the joy of the work that the master has called us to.

The Comparison Game in Our Lives

So often as a pastor, I see people who, because of their whatever rudimentary spiritual understanding, because of their youth in the faith perhaps, because of their lack of having whatever that is—that certain something that they think they need. I hear people all the time when we say, "Hey, would you consider going on a church plant? Would you consider serving in this way? Would you consider discipling someone else?" I hear people say, "Well, but I only have one talent. I only have one talent."

I want to challenge you this morning. What is your—how are you playing the comparison game with regards to the things that God has called you to, where you're saying to God, "But I only have one talent"?

Because what you're doing when you say that is effectively you're taking what God has given you and you're burying it. And you're saying I'm not gonna use it because I didn't get enough. You may not have this wicked view of the master, but essentially that's what you're doing. You're saying you didn't give me enough, God. You didn't give me enough to do anything with.

I wanna challenge you that those in this church, even the youngest of us in the faith, probably have more than we realize. In the ancient world, in the biblical transcripts, when Paul is writing to Titus about establishing a church and he's saying, "Hey, you need to appoint some elders in this church," do you know how long all of those people had been Christians? About six months. And Paul's already talking about appointing elders. So here's the deal: if you've been a Christian for six months, guess what? You've got something. You've got something to give. Paul was already calling people to serve in ways that you couldn't have even imagined.

I want you to remember too the story about Jesus watching people giving at the temple. Remember the widow's mite? She just has two little coins and she throws them in. There's all these other people who are giving this big amount. And Jesus says, "Who gave the greatest?" It's her. Don't play the comparison game. Just go all in with what you have.

Perhaps another reason why the wicked servant viewed the master as wicked is because he was afraid. And maybe that's where you were sympathetic with the wicked servant. Because I'm always afraid, right? I am always afraid. But here's what I want to tease out for you.

In this parable, there are two servants who invest. How many of them fail? Zero. That's so interesting to me. It would have been so easy for Jesus to have made this story about one guy who invested and got a return, one guy who buried it, and one guy who failed. But he doesn't do that. Everybody who invests in this parable wins.

In fact, the only parable that talks about somebody getting a large chunk of money and blowing it is the prodigal son. And he comes back to the father and he's received. I wanna submit to you that there is no failure in the kingdom of God for those who invest what God has given them. Oftentimes it feels like failure, but I wanna submit to you that there's never failure in the kingdom of God for those who choose to invest and who rightly view the master. That prodigal son at the end of the story rightly views his father. And that's what I wanna submit to you is the problem with the wicked servant.

Ultimately, it's not a problem of faithlessness. It's not that he didn't do what he was supposed to do. It's that he just didn't see the master rightly. The wicked servant is judged because he judges the master wrongly. His description of the master is the reality that he enters into. It's like what you call a self-fulfilling prophecy. The master is very generous with all those who view him as generous, but the guy who he's given twenty years of wages to, who he's poured into, who he's invested in—who comes back to him and says, "Hey, you are a slave driver"—he says, "Well, I'll show you a slave driver." It's like, "If I can't change your heart, if I can't change your mind with this, then I probably never am." And that's the warning of this parable.

It's not that you be faithless with what God has given you. It's that you should be careful to view the master as the generous God that he is. Because when you view him rightly, you can't help but invest. There's no reason to fear a God who has been as generous as he has been with you. Doesn't Paul say that in Romans 8?

He who gave us his son, won't he also give us all things?

Doesn't that frame our view of the master? He's given us everything in his son. How can we doubt his generosity and his goodness?

How Those with Advent Hearts Rejoice

The two faithful servants—the ones who view the master rightly—their reward is this wonderful commendation, the one that we all want when we walk into heaven:

Well done, good and faithful servant.

But the thing that stuck out to me this time about that phrase is "enter into the joy of your master." That's their reward. Enter into the joy of your master.

And what does that joy look like? Well, for the guy with five talents, he gets another one. He gets the one from the faithless servant. But God says, "To you whom I've entrusted little, I'll entrust much." In other words, they get more work. They get entrusted with more, and that's what I want you to see.

Oftentimes, we see the talents as the gift. The talents aren't the gifts, brothers and sisters. The talents are the wrapping paper. When we tear into them, what we find is the work that God has called us to. And what is that work? What is the real gift that the master gives his servants? It's the work of the family. He gives them the family business. He gives them all of his resources in order to do the things that he would do with them.

And what does God do with his resources? Oh my goodness. Look only at the cross. What is the family business of God? It's things like love, redemption, justice, peace, wholeness. Shalom. It's the restoring of the created order, which was created out of this beautiful explosion of love out of the Trinity expanding throughout the universe. That's the family business.

Brothers and sisters, that is what we get to do. That's why you've been given talents, you've been given knowledge of salvation, why you've been given money, why you've been given time on this earth. It is to engage in the work of the master which he has called us to. And what an amazing work that is. Amen. It's so awesome.

When I was in college, there was this exchange student from Montana State who came to NC State, and I got to know her. A friend of mine got to like her. She went back to Montana, and there was this budding relationship between these two. So he decided he wanted to take a road trip to Montana to visit her and her family, and he didn't want to do that alone. So I got to go on this road trip to Montana with my buddy to see his hopefully girlfriend.

Her dad had an amazing job. Her dad ran a dude ranch in Western Montana. I mean, a multimillion dollar dude ranch with big houses. He had one house that was entirely built to resemble an old Western saloon, had the roulette tables and everything. But it had like ten houses on the estate. They had snowmobiles. They had horses. They had multiple staff. This guy's job was just to run that.

He invited us to stay at the dude ranch because the dude was gone. We got to be the dudes. And I asked the guy, "Hey, how did you get this gig? Is the owner okay with this?" He says, "He wants us to host people because he doesn't want us to get into the habit of not being hospitable."

That's a picture of what we've been called to do in this life. We get to engage in the work of the master. We get to do it now, but what's amazing is the end of this passage. The servants get more responsibility, and that's the advent piece of this. There's an already not yet reality to our joy. We have joy now. We lit a joy candle. We lit it last week. We have joy now because of all that we've been given. But guess what? We're going to a place where we're going to be given more. We're going to rule and reign alongside of Christ our savior for eternity where we will be about the work of the family business, engaged in this beautiful picture of love and wholeness forever.

One Assignment for the Week

I want to give you one assignment. It's almost Christmas, so I'm going to go easy on you. One assignment for this week is to go watch a movie. I want you to watch A Christmas Carol. I think A Christmas Carol is based on this parable. Stories like that really weave into our hearts the points. Jesus gave you a story, I'm giving you a story.

Go watch A Christmas Carol. There's literally like a hundred versions of that. Watch the Mickey Mouse and Scrooge McDuck version, the Muppets version. If you're edgy, watch Scrooge with Bill Murray. There's Patrick Stewart. There's what my dad calls the canonical version, which is the George C Scott version. Whichever version, I don't care. Go home and watch that with your family.

Watch how Scrooge gets transformed from a person of misery to a person of joy because that is the gift that God has called us to. That is the reminder. There's that advent kind of reminder to that story, right? Ghost of Christmas past, present, and the warning coming from the ghost of the future. Christmas future. That's the warning of this passage.

Don't miss out on the incredible gift that God has given you to participate in the joy of the family business. Merry Christmas, CTK. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.