Deo Gloria
Sermon for October 13, 2019
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Matthew 25:14-30
Theme: What Really Matters is Knowing the Master!
The day was September 22, the year, 1776. He had been discovered and arrested as a spy, and he was due to be hanged on a British gallows. That was when Captain Nathan Hale rather famously stated, “I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Is it possible that you would have such a feeling and make a similar statement as a believer in Jesus? “It’s too bad that I have only this one life that I can live for my Lord!”
This story Jesus told obviously turns on the big difference between the two faithful servants and the one unfaithful servant. What was it that made such a difference in how they acted? It’s not even suggested that the wicked servant was upset because the other two servants received more from their master than he did. Truth is all three of them received a lot. Back in Jesus’ day, a talent was a unit of weight, but it was also a unit of money. It was equal to over 16 years’ wages. Calculate that for yourself. If you make $50,000 a year, that comes to over $800,000. If you make $80,000 a year, that comes to around $1.3 million. So all three of them were given large amounts of money.
But look at what it says about those talents, those large sums of money. The master entrusted them to his servants. If we’re going to let the Word of God speak to our hearts and guide our lives, you and I need to do some accounting. What gifts has God given to us? Your house is God’s. Your phone is God’s. Your car is God’s. Your kids are God’s. Your abilities are God’s. Your financial assets are God’s. If you can be the least bit kind and helpful to others, that gift came to you from God. If you can be compassionate and encouraging when people are hurting, that gift came to you from God. The God who has given you all you have wants to know one thing: How are you using it? Are you using it all, every bit of it, to honor him?
If you’re not, there’s hell to pay. You see, it’s not just churches that get serious about stewardship when the leaves start falling. The Lord is always serious about how we manage what he has entrusted to us. Seven times in the New Testament Jesus repeated that hell is a place of eternal darkness, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth for those who rebel and turn away from God. The wicked servant’s rebellion was not selling opioids that people overdosed on. It wasn’t murder. It wasn’t addiction to pornography or alcohol. Do you know what his rebellion was? Doing nothing—not using God’s gifts for God’s glory. His rebellion was: “Leave me alone so I can do what I want.”
If you have a nice place to live, a nice car to drive, and maybe even a nice TV to watch, that’s great. Those are good gifts from God. Thank God for them and take good care of them. But also take inventory of all the good things God has given you and figure out the answer to this question: How much of what God has given you have you buried in the ground of self-advancement and self-enjoyment rather than using it for the glory of God and the good of others? You see, the first commandment requires perfect love for God in this area of stewardship too, and that buries you and me in guilt way over our heads.
Here’s the thing about those two faithful servants. They weren’t perfect. They were sinners too. But their story started long before their master went on a journey and entrusted them with his money. There was something that was already firmly in place, something that had been created inside them, so that when they were given all that money and their master went away on his journey, the first and only thing they could think to do was to devote themselves to activities and projects that would be pleasing to him when he returned. So what do you think that something was?
In the news we see all kinds of disasters involving loss of life. Often you see a close relative or family member still very much in the grieving process, trying to talk on camera about how much they loved the person who died. When those close family ties are severed by death, there’s heartache, deep and painful heartache. Those close family relationships give us a little glimpse of the closest tie there ever was, the eternal bond of love between God the Father and God the Son, a love that is stronger than a cat. 5 hurricane, a love that words can scarcely describe.
When it came to the matter of having someone pay for your sins, there were only two options: either it would be you going to that place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, or it would be a pure and perfect substitute going to that place of weeping and gnashing of teeth for you. Before you were born, even before he created the world, God the Father had already made that choice. On Good Friday he acted on that choice. The thick, unbreakable cords of perfect and eternal love that bound the Father to the Son were severed. God the Father sliced through those cords and dropped his beloved Son into the torturous darkness of God-forsakenness. Even in that hell of hells, with the guilt of the whole world counted against him, Jesus did not gnash his teeth in anger against God. In silent suffering he was damned, so you might be spared. Your Father in heaven chose to keep you…and curse his Son.
That’s the something those two faithful servants had seen in their master, how deep his love for them was. That’s what they knew about him before he so generously entrusted his property to them: They knew how much he loved them. That’s what drove them to devote themselves so completely to working for him while he was gone. Of all the things they could have had for themselves—new clothes, new sandals, new furniture, a summer home on the Sea of Galilee—hearing “well done” from their master was better, a thousand times better. The master’s great love was also what the wicked servant dismissed as irrelevant and meaningless. Tragically, he thought he had better things to do, more important things to be concerned about than why God put him here on earth and why God gave him what he did. Tragically, the consequences for him were both devastating and eternal.
In the vast array of gifts that God gives, he has distributed them in various kinds and in various amounts to all of us, because he knows just what we need to be able to serve him well. The only key that will ever turn over the engine of our hearts and take us down the road of devoting ourselves to serving him with those gifts is how much Jesus loves us. In this arena of making faithful use of God’s gifts, what really matters is knowing the Master. Love is what’s in his heart for you. Let it be love that is in your heart for him as well, because there need be no regret that you’ve only been given one life to live for your Savior. He’s given you this life to live for him, and eternal life as well. So let’s take this life and all that he’s given us and make the most of it for him! Amen.