24“Then the servant with the one bag of silver came and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a harsh man, harvesting crops you didn’t plant and gathering crops you didn’t cultivate. 25I was afraid I would lose your money, so I hid it in the earth. Look, here is your money back.’” (Matthew 25:24-25)
Hello friends. I am writing to y’all late in the day. We had another wonderful night at our Bible Study here in Poland. I have really enjoyed this experience, gathering with very wise leaders and having very productive conversations of what we each get out of the Word. Tonight we looked at the “Parable of the Loaned Money”.
In this parable from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells a story of a wealthy man who is going away on a long trip. Before he leaves he gives three of his servants different sums of silver, called “talents”. One servant is given five bags of silver, another is given two, and the last is only given one bag. In my Bible, Jesus states that the amount given was “divided in proportion of their abilities”. The servant with the five talents invested the money and made five more bags of silver. The servant with two bags was able to double his money as well. But the third servant, just hid the money given to him. We read this servant’s explanation in the verses above. He was scared of the master, so he hid the money to ensure he did not loose it.
When the master returns, he is very pleased with his first two servants. But with the third, he takes away the bag of silver and gives it to the servant with the most, and ordered the servant to be thrown in ‘outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’.
Jesus tells this story to explain what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. As a group, everyone at Bible Study agreed that the Master represented God and the “talents” were not referring to money, but rather a person’s God-given talents. And the parable was teaching us not to waste our talents, but to use the gift God gives us to invest in the Kingdom. Well, I posed a question to the group to see if they could clear up my own confusion about the verse above. If the master is the loving, merciful, passionate God that Jesus has come to reveal to the world more accurately, then why does this servant describe the Master in such harsh term?. While the group offered some good explanation, none of their explanations really fit. But as I sat in the group thinking it over, a better idea entered my mind. The servant DIDN’T know the master. This servant thought the master was the vengeful, powerful God the Jewish faith had come to fear. And while being afraid of God is a tragedy, what the servant did truly angered the master the most: he did nothing! He took his misguided understanding of the master and wasted everything the master gave him.
How true is this for those who live their lives without knowing the true nature of the Creator of Life? God has gifted them with skills, talents, and abilities that they may never harness because they think God is this strict rule-maker who throws down fire and brimstone if they make any mistakes and do not live a perfect life. They never tap into their true potential because they fail to use their talents to seek the Kingdom. Just like the servant, these lost individuals never invest the time to learn who God truly is, and then they try to blame God for all the wrong things in their life.
What are your God-given talents? Are you using those talents to invest in the Kingdom? Take the young man below: Miles Minnick. He’s released a handful of catchy Christian rap songs. He’s got a voice like a young T.I., and puts very trendy beats together. I really loved “Christlike”, but his new single, Squabble, is a fun song that has the possibility to point a whole generation back to Christ. This is a servant investing his talents to bring back huge dividends to grow the Kingdom. So I ask again, what are YOU doing with the talents God has given you?
Common Sense Reborn 