1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word this 24th Sunday after Pentecost is taken from Matt. 25.14-30, and is entitled, “The Joy of the Master,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. The tragedy of this parable isn’t the failure to serve. It’s the failure to truly know your Savior. When you first read this parable, it sounds like a teaching about stewardship. We have two sets of servants: Faithful and unfaithful. The faithful servants use the gifts they’ve been given and are welcomed by their master. The unfaithful servant hides his gift and is condemned. The parable seems to say, “Work faithfully with what God has given you… or else.”
3. In a world where many people see the Church as an oppressive, money-grabbing institution, this parable only confirms their misconception: God is a demanding master and you had better obey… or else. For these people, the Church is a place that uses its power to get. It uses God’s judgment to inspire guilt and fear among people in order to get their money, their time, their brainwashed minds, and their unquestioning service. As a parishioner from one of my previous parishes once told me, “Pastor, I already have enough guilt in my life. I don’t need the church to add any more.”
4. But, the ministry of Jesus, reveals a different kind of God. God didn’t come to get. He came to give. In His ministry, Jesus proclaimed and enacted the year of the Lord’s favor. He cleansed lepers, healed the sick, cast out demons, and raised the dead. God didn’t come to get. He came to give. Jesus said in Matthew 20:28,” 28…the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
5. Unfortunately, the religious leaders of the day used their power… to get Jesus. Jesus died at the hands of a corrupt and abusive religious system. But, when God raised Jesus from the dead, He revealed the true nature of His rule: To bring forgiveness, life, and salvation to a fallen world. The Church is the dwelling place of that God. He’s a God who gives. It’s not an institution that uses power to get from people, rather it’s the place where God gives to His people who then give to others in self-sacrificial love.
6. If you read the parable more closely, you will see this vision of God and His Kingdom. First, notice how Jesus is less interested in stewardship and more interested in the relationship people have with their God. The error of the unfaithful servant isn’t that he didn’t use his money. It’s that he believed a lie about God. At the close of the parable, the unfaithful servant confesses his understanding of God. He says, “I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed” (verse 24). Can you hear his misconception? Instead of a God who gives, he believes in a god who demands and takes. The third servant didn’t regard serving his master as a privilege and derived no joy from it. He described the master as “hard,” showing that his view of their relationship was distorted from its beginning. Whenever we see our God as a tyrant that demands to be satisfied rather than a Father who desires our love, we fall into the sinful error of this servant. The tragedy of this parable isn’t the failure to serve. It’s the failure to truly know your Savior. Because a servant didn’t know his master, he died in his own lie.
7. Second, who is this master Jesus desires us to know? At the beginning of the parable, Jesus shows us a master who is personal and generous. The master is personal in how he gives to his servants. He calls each servant in and speaks to each one individually. In addition, the master knows each servant’s skills & abilities. He gives, “To each according to his ability” (verse 15). Not only is the master personal in how he gives, he is also personal in what he gives. The master gives them of, “…his property” (verse 14). This gift is gracious and generous. Years of wages are offered in an amazing act of grace and trust. This parable, then, opens with a generous, personal, gracious master who calls, knows, equips, and commissions his servants.
8. Skills or abilities decline after prolonged periods of disuse. Financial wealth must also be invested wisely and put to work lest it depreciate. There’s truth to the expression “use it or lose it.” The talents described in today’s parable are sums of money rather than particular skills and abilities, but the principle still applies. Our heavenly Father desires that His resources be engaged for use, not shelved, hidden, or wasted. As opposed to the parable of the minas in Luke 19, where all the servants are given responsibility for an equal amount of money, here the three servants are entrusted with varying quantities. Although one must be careful not to miss the central thought of a parable for the details, God’s Holy Spirit reminds us that every person is uniquely gifted by Him. That is His design and desire. No two of us are exactly alike.
9. While God’s gifts may be given differently, the satisfaction that comes from using them in His service is not. It is uniform in its completeness and fills every servant’s life, whether he holds a position of prominence or performs a task that few desire and fewer still notice. Neither the five-talent nor the two-talent servant returned to the master with any complaints. They didn’t bring along an agent to negotiate a profit-sharing agreement or claim a percentage of the gain for themselves. Their total focus was on serving their Master faithfully. They were invited to “enter into the joy of your master,” but joy had already been a benefit of their service. But, now, their joy would be greater.
10. This is the God Jesus came to reveal in a world full of misconceptions about God. God is the one who created you and made you the way you are. He is the one who forgives you and claims you in Christ and makes you a member of His Kingdom. He is the one who provides you with gifts of His own Spirit. He is the one who commissions you to serve where you can be productive. And, when Christ returns, He will reward you for doing what He has created, equipped, and commissioned you to do. God has an overflowing generosity which is personal and powerful in our lives. He won’t abandon the lost or break the broken. Rather, He invites all people to come to know the wisdom of His love.
11. “Draw near to God,” James says, “and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8). As we look at our lives and our service in the Kingdom, questions of stewardship come up. But, before we begin talking about the service we give to God, it’s important to talk about the service God gives to us. He is not our taskmaster. He is a Savior. Not only has He saved us from sin through Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, but He has equipped us with gifts and given us talents according to our ability and promises to rejoice with us in those works when He returns. Ultimately, the performance this parable emphasizes is not ours but Christ’s. Because of Jesus, the “Good and Faithful Servant”, serving the Lord is for us a blessing rather than a burden.
12. By the power of the Holy Spirit, our Savior transforms us from slaves or servants to sons and then to heirs Galatians 4:1–7 says, “1I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, 2but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. 4But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
13. “Use it or lose it?” The joy of the Master is that God used His Son Jesus to serve us so that we wouldn’t be lost eternally. Knowing God means we know ourselves as His children, forgiven of sin and equipped for service in the world. To know the joy of service in this world now is to know the joy of the Master both in this world and in the next. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment