Turn in your Bibles, please, to Matthew chapter 25. We're gonna look this morning at verses 14 through 30. So Matthew 25, 14 through 30. Once you are there, I would ask if you would please stand in reverence as we read God's word. And these are the infallible words of God. 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 five talents, to another two, and 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 him, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug it 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 five talents. Here I have made you five 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 have made two 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. He also, who 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 mine with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, 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 there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." And may God bless the reading of his word. And you may be seated. So we are still on Tuesday of Holy Week. This is still Jesus' final confrontation with the Pharisees and the scribes on Tuesday of Holy Week from the Mount of Olives. And we have, over the course of this discourse at the Mount of Olives, we have seen that Jesus, first of all, is describing a very near at hand judgment that is about to fall on Jerusalem, which happened in AD 70, and then he expands out, and he is in the process of expanding out the time horizon, to the final judgment. And given the nature of parables, of course they are adaptable, and so what is being taught in these parables can apply equally in either sense, but I do believe Jesus is talking more and more as we go on about the final judgment, about the second coming of Christ to wrap up history. And we have it here in the parable of the 10 virgins, which is somewhat similar to, or we saw last week, pardon me, the parable of the 10 virgins, which is similar in many ways to the parable that we have here today. Some of you perhaps have heard me say, I mention it frequently because I learned it from a mentor of mine, when given a different situation or a difficult sometimes situation, I will often say that we need to turn a profit on it. And I got that from this parable. And that's I think the attitude that I need to remind myself of. When different situations come up, it's meant to turn a profit on. God puts everything in our hands so that we can turn a profit on it as indeed we are instructed today. This parable of the talent teaches us that one of our duties as we wait for Christ to return is to be fruitful with whatever God has entrusted into our hands. So whether God has given us much or whether he has given us little, we need to be fruitful and do as much as we possibly can with it. And so again, to summarize here in a capsule form, a children's sermon as it were. Kids, you can remember this because I'm sure your parents are going to ask you what you learned in church at lunchtime. So here it is. This is a parable in which Jesus is telling us that whatever work he gives us to do, it is our job to make God happy by doing the best with it. And also, if we like what God has done in somebody else's life, we should not be jealous, but we should focus on the responsibilities God has given us. What he has done in your life is what you are responsible to work with. Both of these parables, last week's of the 10 virgins and this week's of the talents, are teaching essentially the same lesson, and that is readiness, to be prepared when the master comes back, when the groom returns. And in both cases, we see that really the only way to be ready is to constantly live ready. That's the only way we can be sure to be ready at any time, is just by living that way. Martin Luther was asked once, this is debatable whether he actually said this or not, because we don't have hard records of this, but it's ascribed to him, that he was asked, what would you do if you knew that Jesus Christ would return tomorrow? And he said, if I knew for certain that Jesus Christ would return tomorrow, I would plant an apple tree today. That is a godly mindset. That is thinking for the long game. That is doing the right thing regardless of what the circumstances may be. To be ready means we must live ready. We must be in a constant state of obeying our master. I think his approach, and the approach we see here, is obviously correct. This is the approach that Christ has been teaching in these parables. And this one starts out, verses 14 through 18, it says, 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 five talents, to another two, to another one, two each according to his ability, and then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with him, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more, but he who had received the one talent went and dug it in the ground and hid his master's money. And so here again we have a picture of the kingdom of God and what life is like after Jesus' ascension. So Jesus leaves, he sends his spirit, so now how do we live as we await the return of the king? Jesus has gone back to the right hand of the father, and he has left us as vice regents in his creation. That means we labor as those who are deputized under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ to be stewards of his creation. We are vice regents on earth. We are meant to have dominion on this earth, but it is, of course, under the lordship of Jesus Christ. And so in many ways, by leaving us to steward his creation on earth, Christ is actually repeating the original mandate that our parents first got in the garden, to have dominion, be fruitful. And really, the Great Commission and all of our instructions are a repeat of that first dominion mandate in the garden. Be fruitful. Do positive, productive things as you wait. And in fact, this is actually the whole purpose of man. Our whole purpose, our whole duty is to reflect the image of God by being productive and fruitful. This is good for us and it brings glory to God. And this is a builder mindset. This is the mindset of a maker and not of a taker. We are to leverage God's resources as much as we can to return them back to him for his glory. And in this case of this parable, because we have an English word talent, we might confuse it that this has to do with specific talents or skills, so to speak, but this is actually financial currency for the sake of this proverb. A talent was about 75 pounds of gold. So that would be roughly 20 years of labor is one talent. So we're not dealing with small amounts here. So if we would take a salary of $50,000, then one talent in our currency today would be about $1 million. So this is not a small trust that this master has put in these servants. All three of them are entrusted with significant resources. And again, this parable is not primarily about money. Money is the instance that Jesus is using to show a bigger principle. But because it does use money to make the principle, we shouldn't make this about finances. This is about more than finances, but it's also not about less than finances, because Jesus paints a moral picture using financial stewardship. And so I think, while that will not be the main point, we ought to stop and think about this at least a little bit, because this is the occasion that Jesus is using to paint a bigger picture. And I think it's highly applicable to us because we do, in fact, live in an age of envy. And envy and greed and covetousness show up in all kinds of ways in our age. It's very easy to hear criticism about wealthy people or about certain kinds of privilege or income inequality. And any kind of inequality in our way of thinking today is perceived to be some kind of oppression or some kind of injustice. And people get the impression, sometimes the way economics is very poorly taught, as though there's a fixed amount of wealth on planet Earth, and there's only a fixed amount that's even possible. And so the more some people have, the less that is left over for me. And of course, that is oppression. Your problems, unfortunately, are the result that billionaires literally exist. And of course, that's not at all the problem, because God did not make a world with fixed amounts of wealth. God made a world of abundance which can be turned into super abundance. And even this parable demonstrates that. When we think about our job as Christian stewards and managing God's gifts, we need to remember here that the Greek word that gets translated into English as economy is actually a Greek word, oikonomia, which literally means house law, the law of the house. How households operate, how things function, how the work gets distributed, how finances get managed, that is a biblical picture of economics, and our biblical world should fill in how we view economics today. Economics is not a standalone discipline. It does have to do with stewardship. It does have to do with the resources that God has put into creation. It has to do with the management, ultimately, of all resources which, in the final end, do belong to God. And our modern religion, the philosophy of our age that has taken over and keeps being fed, is a philosophy of greed, of envy, and covetousness, and it has been popularized by its most famous high priest, Karl Marx. Marx's philosophy of resource management and wealth can be summed up this way. These are actually his words. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Okay, from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. So you take from the haves and you give to the have-nots. And there is, of course, a progressive form of Christianity alive and well today, a kind of a liberal social justice form of Christianity, which has taken this approach and tried to baptize it with certain biblical ethics. But this approach, I do believe, has more to do with envy, it has more to do with Marx than it does with the Bible. Because, we see at the outset here, Jesus illustrating a morally good point says the exact opposite of what the envy and the greed of Karl Marx says. Marx says, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. What does Jesus say here through the mouth of this parable? To each, verse 15, to each according to his ability. This is the exact opposite. The faithful man should get more, not less, okay? And of course, this philosophy that is alive and well today, Marx, who popularized it. Marx was intentionally a hater of Christianity. Marx despised Christianity. He hated everything about it. He hated marriage. He hated productive work. He hated everything about the Christian order. And his philosophy is capable of destroying, it is capable of being a parasite on a healthy society, but it is utterly incapable of producing anything positive as a biblical conception could do. And I'm frequently reminded when we confront unbelieving philosophies of what the author of Proverbs says in Proverbs 8, 36, that he who fails to find me injures himself. All who hate me love death. And isn't that the case? We kill babies, we kill seniors, we kill economics, we kill productivity, we kill everything when we cut ourselves off from God, from a biblical conception of stewardship. So Christian approach to stewardship is interested in growth and life, it's interested in flourishing, it's interested in abundance, it's interested in seeing God's purposes, and therefore it sees it as morally good, not just permissible, but good if resources get to the places where they will accomplish the most amount of good. And this vast divide in thinking between the philosophy of envy and the view of Christian flourishing has been playing itself out for a long time in history. And although Karl Marx himself was a German, he lived in England in the 1800s, as he was writing, not coincidentally, I would say, in the very same time that Charles Spurgeon's ministry was at its height. And so you have two very prominent public figures that could not possibly have offered more opposite views of the world than those two men who were alive in London in the 1800s. They were working with a different conception of how reality works. Spurgeon, of course, presenting a biblical view of abundance and flourishing and stewardship. In his 1905 book called The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the economist Max Weber credits Protestant Christianity and very particularly the Puritans for creating a mindset in which capitalism and the expansion of wealth was able to flourish. And much of that is based on parables like this one. So where one vision sees that fair means that everyone has to end up at the finish line at the exact same time, we have to equalize everything for everybody so that we don't have inequality. In the classical Christian biblical conception, fair means getting resources into the hands of those who are going to manage it diligently. If resources are allowed to flow naturally into the hands of those who are the most productive, the whole creation itself becomes more fruitful. And again, the point of this parable isn't strictly on economics, it uses economics, so we must say something there, but really what it's pointing to, what it's symbolizing here is spiritual stewardship. But we do need to think about how this applies in the world of economics as well. because Jesus is saying the arrangement that we see here of getting more into the hands of the diligent, this is a picture of how the kingdom of God works. In other words, Jesus tells a story and then he says, in the kingdom of God, that is what goodness, truth, and beauty looks like. It looks like that. So this is morally good. And it's noteworthy, when we think about this parable, that there's actually no specific instructions that are given to these servants. If you read carefully, the master doesn't say, invest my money. He doesn't explicitly say that. Rather, the fact that these servants are wise mean that they already just understand that. The master would not give me something if he didn't intend for me to do well with it. So these servants are like James. Their actions are saying, essentially, show me your faith by your works. They just have that mindset because they are wise servants. They can't conceive of not doing something fruitful with what they have been given. And so here we are reminded, yes, we are saved by faith alone. That is absolutely true. But the faith that saves is never alone. There is no such thing as a justification that does not grow into sanctification. Kelvin comments that we dream not of a faith which is devoid of good works, nor of a justification which can exist without them. Saved people think like saved people. It's just instinctive that we do positive things with the opportunities and the giftings and the resources that God has given us. So the wisdom of these wise servants makes them incapable of being idle or unproductive. It's not even an option that they consider because they're not wired that way. They are wired for wisdom. They're productive even when no specific instructions are given. And so their natural instinct is to get busy doing the work of their master, even when there's not specific instructions. And again, this is a picture of born-again people who want to serve the Lord. It's just instinctive that we desire to do things which are productive for the Lord. And so we might ask ourselves, if we ourselves, personally, have a mindset that is full of envy and covetousness towards what God is doing in others' lives, the gifts that others have, or are we able to see that the gifts and talents and opportunities that he has given us as a stewardship is to be nurtured and enjoyed? God gives to each of us exactly what we need, okay? And that's one of the beautiful things about having a robust view of providence is that your challenges, your opportunities, the resources are custom-built for you. They don't end up on your lap by mistake. God has written the story for exactly what we need in the moment, and we must turn a healthy prophet on those circumstances. So our instinct ought to be to be productive. to work with the kingdom of God in mind, even when we face situations where we don't have detailed instructions. And you'll realize most situations in life, we can and we must and we should apply biblical wisdom, but you've probably already noticed in your life that there's not a Bible verse telling you exactly what to do in your situation. That's what biblical wisdom is. You've so internalized the logic of the Bible that you know how to apply it to situations even if you don't have a specific word on what to do there. We need to be like the wise servants and apply the principles of biblical wisdom. And the story goes on in verse 19. 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 five talents. Here, I have made five 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. And he also, who had the two talents, came forward, saying, Master, you delivered me two talents. Here, I have made two talents more. As 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 here we have the wise servants being rewarded for their stewardship. And the way they are rewarded is by being given more resources to manage. You've shown yourself to be good here. I will give you more. That's part of your reward is that your plate actually gets fuller. And I think sometimes some of us feel like, okay, well, I've got enough blessings now for a little bit, God. Thank you, I'm good for a little bit, but the fact that God has entrusted you with more is actually a form of blessing. It frequently means that you have been faithful with the past test, so here is more to handle. We can see this as a blessing. And the principle is that to him who is faithful with a little, more will in fact be given. But it's also interesting that it doesn't equal out. So the second servant, even after his resources have been doubled, even after he has been blessed with more, his finishing point of four talents is still less than what the first servant started with. So this doesn't mean everyone equals out at the same place in the end, but rather they are both rewarded, but there's not envy between these two. They've both been faithful with what they've been given, which is all they can do, and they are rewarded, and they enter into the same rest, they receive the same blessing, even though what they had to work with was different. And so here too, we should see that there's not room for envy. We've got all kinds of Christians, and all kinds of family members, and all kinds of church members, and all kinds of people in our lives who are gifted differently, and sometimes at a greater capacity than we are. And that's not something to be envious about, that's not something to covet, that is just the way God makes the creation. And he distributes gifts, and he distributes them according to his pleasure, and that's not always the same. It's God's good and sovereign pleasure, as the master in this story, to give gifts as he pleases. So we are responsible not for what we have to start with, not our position, not our starting point, not our circumstances. What we are responsible is for how we use those things. And as we are faithful, we can expect more opportunities to be faithful. Where the parable of the ten virgins points us to the expectation of the groom's return, this parable points us to the fact that the time of waiting must be filled with productive, fruitful work. And again, because the genuinely saved person wants, he desires to push the Lordship of Christ into all the corners, It makes sense that the wise servants are excited to show the master what they have done with his resources. And you see that. The two productive servants both receive approval and reward, while the unproductive servant gets a very different response. We see that starting in verse 24. He also who 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 mine with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has 10 talents. So while this servant is not necessarily wrong in every single detail, he certainly has a very distorted view of the master. The first two servants view him, view the master, in light of their productive capacity. They have a fruitful nature, and so they have a positive vision of this master, because he's not a threat to them. He is a rewarder of their faithfulness. But it's not surprising at all that the sluggard views the master as a hard man. And I think we don't have to use our imaginations too much to see how this works out in everyday life. Take your work situation, if you work with a crew of people, and the foreman of your job, or maybe you are the foreman, and on the actual job site, you've got a mixture of productive people and unproductive people. Guess which ones complain about the master being a slave master? The guy who does nothing is the guy who complains about how hard he's forced to work. But he's the one doing the least. Think of children. Dad's so heavy-handed. Dad's such an authoritarian. Which kids think that? The obedient kids or the kids that are fighting all the time and cutting against the grain? This is not hard to imagine. Unfruitful people complain. That's part of their unfruitfulness. They don't see an opportunity, they just see difficulty. So you can always be assured of which workers on the job site are going to complain. It's the unfruitful ones. And I think we can tell a lot about a man or a woman's character based on the way that they view others, especially those others that they are responsible to, who are in authority over them. Diligent and godly people don't have trouble typically because their actions don't create friction. They're living in such a way that friction doesn't come. It's just fruitful and everyone's happy and it just leads to more abundance and more happiness and things tend to work. Diligent and godly people don't have trouble Again, because they're doing things that prevent trouble. However, lazy people and wicked people, and notice closely this. Notice how closely in these parables sluggishness and wickedness are almost synonymous. To be lazy is to be evil. Laziness is a form of evil. Laziness is a sin. Laziness is wicked. Lazy people and wicked people tend to have ongoing problems with everyone around them because their ungodly conduct just creates more, just a longer string of trouble. And I think we, again, we don't have to use our imaginations too much to see that trouble just follows some people everywhere they go. We all know the person, the one guy who always gets bad service at every restaurant. At a certain point you have to say, it's not the waitresses, you're the idiot. It's not everyone else who's the problem, maybe you are the problem. And again, this applies in our families, it applies in churches, it applies everywhere. Here, a lot like Adam. You did the wrong thing, you got caught doing the wrong thing, rather than saying, yes, I'm responsible, please forgive me, you start pointing the finger at everyone whose problem it actually is. I'm the victim in all this. And so this man uses as his defense the fact that he has been offended. His defense is someone else's offense. And again, wicked people, starting at Adam, have blamed God for their laziness. They blame the circumstances, they blame the woman, they blame the garden, they blame the snake, they blame everything. It's everyone's fault except for mine. And this man blames the master. Supposedly this master is heavy handed. And I think that's actually a misreading of this text. Matthew Henry commenting here. says that does not all the world know the contrary, that he is so far from being a hard master that the earth is full of his goodness, so far from reaping where he has not sowed that he sows a great deal where he reaps nothing. For he causes the sun to shine and his rain to fall upon the evil and unthankful, and fills their hearts with food and gladness, who say to the Almighty, depart from us. This suggestion bespeaks the common reproach which wicked people cast upon God, as if all the blame of their sin and ruin lay at his door, for denying them his grace. But if we perish, it is owing to ourselves. It's easy to read this parable, and I will admit I have for most of my life, as though the master actually was a hard man. And so he's accused of being a hard man, and then the master agrees with him being a hard man. Reading actually a number of the Puritan commentators actually caused me to rethink that. He's not a hard man. And when he's restating what the servant has accused him of, he actually frames it in the form of a question. Look at verse 27. It's a question mark that ends with it. So the master is saying essentially, oh really, you knew that I'm a hard man. You think you know that. What would make you think that? These other guys don't think that. Why would you think that? The master is not a hard man. But somehow this servant knew him to be a hard man, again, because of his own wickedness. And after I read that a few times, it actually caused me to think, yeah, there probably is something to this. But even then, even if he was a hard man, the sluggard's actions still make no sense. Because if what's happening here is he's saying, if you really thought that about me, if you really thought I was a hard man, your actions still actually make no sense whatsoever. It's entirely illogical if you're saying I'm a hard man. Because if this was true, if I was a hard man and you were scared of me, If you didn't work out of love, then at least you would have worked out of fear. But you didn't even do that. So your accusation does not stand. Your actions make no sense with what's coming out of your mouth. Further, if this was true and you were scared of losing my money because you didn't want to take on an aggressive venture like the other two, so you're a little more constrained, you're a little more cautious, that's fine, but at least you could have invested it and I would have got it back with interest. At least I would have something. These guys doubled it, you come back with nothing. So it still doesn't make sense. And then one more way that this makes no sense. If this is a heavy-handed, cruel man, whether he is or he isn't, the accusation is that he reaps where he didn't sow. When I was a kid, we had a neighbor that liked to combine about 10, sometimes 20 feet of my grandpa's wheat. And it was always a mistake. And grandpa told me one year, well, maybe we should move it back 20 feet, because that boundary's actually over here. If he was that kind of a man, that reaped somebody else's seed when it was harvest time. That still doesn't let this guy off the hook. You know why? Because he actually got seed from the master. Whatever he had to work with was the master's seed. So the accusation doesn't count for anything. His defense is completely irrational. It's illogical. It makes no sense. And again, those of us involved in gardening or agriculture can think about this and how this looks. We have a small piece behind our yard, it's not the whole field, but one area on one of our fields, for whatever reason, I've tried a number of times, it does not take alfalfa seed. I don't know why. I can grow everything else, it does not take alfalfa. So if I'm like the master and I'm responsible for stewardship on my farm, is it wise for me to keep putting alfalfa seed there? Is that a good use of resources? To just pound my head against the wall trying to force something that's frankly not going to happen. This land is incapable of growing alfalfa for whatever reason. I'm going to quit wasting resources on something unproductive. I'll grow it where it does flourish. I'll grow it where the land takes it and gives it back to me in super abundance. I've quit triangle falafel in that field. And so too, Jesus looks at these unproductive servant, or this unproductive servant, and relative to the productive ones, and he rightly concludes that if he is interested in building and expanding his kingdom on earth, the resources need to get to the hands of the diligent. It needs to end up with those who are willing to do the work. And he's not going to destroy resources by trusting them to the wicked. And of course, God is God, so he doesn't need our efforts to channel his resources. They're his, he can do as he wants. But in his normal way of operating, he is pleased to involve us in his purposes. And this is both for our good and for his ultimate glory to bring his creation along and involve us in the process of him creating fruit in the world. But just like I won't pour expensive feed into a low-producing cow that won't milk, just like I won't put alfalfa into land that can't grow alfalfa, so Christ will not long give gifts to lazy, wicked sluggards. Rather, he's showing here that he is going to take those resources and redirect them to the most productive servant. And in terms of stewardship, this makes by far the most sense, doesn't it? Can't you see the logic here? Why would you keep destroying resources when someone has shown they can manage it well? But this very parable ironically strikes even a Christian's sense of biblical justice. We've been fed this social justice picture for so long that even this seems like Jesus isn't being very Christ-like here, right? But of course, I will not charge Jesus of being un-Christ-like. This is a picture of good, he says here. This does cut against the grain of our egalitarian age. So not only do we not end up at even distribution, but now Jesus has one man who starts with five talents and now he ends up with 11, and another man who starts with one and ends up with zero, and what does Jesus say? That's good. It's good for one man to start with five and end at 11, and it is good for the poor man who starts at one to end up with zero because he didn't do anything with what he was given. And just in case we miss it, he makes this point rather emphatically in verse 29 and 30. He says, for to everyone who has will more be 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 there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. In God's economy, the diligent will indeed get more, and the sluggard will see that what little he has in his hands, if he's not being faithful with it, will get ripped out of it on his way to hell. Hard words. And again, this egalitarian spirit, the social justice spirit, the socialistic spirit has popularized the modern philosophy that we take towards equity and inclusion and economics and all that, but it cannot be made compatible with scripture. It appears more to have more in common with the covetousness of our age than it does with the ethics of Jesus. And again, this cannot be reduced to just about money. This is about faithfulness with what we have been given. Whether we have little or whether we have much, the instructions are the same. Be fruitful, be diligent, whether you are a poor man or a rich man. So this can never be reduced into rich men are evil or rich men are good and poor men are evil and poor men are good. It's not about that. It's not about where you start. It's not even about where you end up. It's about how did you manage in the meantime. Some of the older people here will perhaps remember a very popular selling book in the late 1970s by Ron Sider, who was something of a progressive evangelical back in those times. And he was advancing kind of socialist economic theory for Christians. And his book was called Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. And it almost went the exact opposite of this parable, that Christians should basically feel bad if God blesses you anyway. And of course, the prosperity gospel is a severe misreading of scripture. But so is the poverty gospel. And the poverty gospel is seemingly around us just as much as the prosperity gospel is. They're both lies, they're both misunderstanding the point. Cider's book was met a few years later by another book, and you can see the different directions these are pushing. David Chilton wrote a book answering this called Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators. So you can see this is, we're heading in different directions here on the view of stewardship of God's resources on earth, and both books definitely did live up to their title. But in an age where we want so desperately to even everything out, to make sure everything is equal in the final end, and we use family estates, and we use wills, and we use insurance, and we use all kinds of things to make sure everything is equal in the end, regardless of the track record of the people involved, Then if we go back and we read in the Bible that wicked sons are literally cut off from the family, that disinheritance is a thing, that strikes at our sense of justice as very, very cruel, very wicked. But again, we can't just take our ethics as normal and plant them in the Bible. What's the biblical picture here of how to steward resources? Why would you give your resources into the hands of a son who is going to destroy your work and work against God's kingdom purposes. And again, more practically, most of us don't have to worry about our billions of dollars, but we all have things that we aren't trusted to, time, talents, resources, giftings, opportunities, and those are the things we do need to think about. How does this principle apply? We are in covenant community in a church like this or in families and other relationships. And if you're paying attention, you're gonna notice that there's needs all around. Kids have needs, siblings have needs, friends have needs. There's needs all around. And that is as it ought to be. We're in covenant, we're in communities with one another and we are there to help each other. But sometimes there are seasons where it may seem a little overwhelming. And we realize that we can't do everything, so we need to prioritize. We need to, you know, kind of do triage. What's the most important? Where do I spend my time? What's the most urgent issue here? And I think one of the things we should learn from this is that one of the principles we apply to is who's willing to turn a profit on their challenge. Nobody can decide that now's the time that disease has happened, now's the time that financial hardship has happened, now's the time that this challenge has come up, or this has come up. But those of us around there need to consider, who's showing a willingness to work with the resources that God gives them? The counselor Jay Adams talks in a church context about counseling. He talks about black holes, okay? And it sounds harsh, but Jay Adams says some people you just need to stop because you're just enabling them. Other people, no matter what you give them, they'll turn it into two times, three times, four times more because they're interested in investing and seeing something positive coming out of the challenge. So whether it's in our families, whether it's with friends, whether it's in a church setting, wherever, for all of us, when we find ourselves with limited time, with limited resources, we must direct those resources where they will show the maximum spiritual flourishing. And again, that does cut against the spirit of the age in some degree. but we should not be deceived by appearances. Remember last parable of the virgins, you have a handful of beautiful, well-dressed young women, wide-eyed, being rejected by Jesus. And now we have a picture of wealthy stewards being entrusted with more on their way to glory, with the poor man being stripped of everything he has and going to hell. Okay, so the poverty gospel is just as much a distortion as the prosperity gospel is. Verse 30 actually calls this man worthless. And I've shared before when I started reading through the Bible in a year, I think I started in 2009. And I remember my first time through remembering how many times the Bible calls people worthless, worthless sons, worthless so-and-so. Is the Bible allowed to talk that way? Because I wasn't allowed to. Why does the Bible have permission to talk that way? Jesus says this guy is worthless. No matter what you give him, he will turn vast amounts of wealth into absolutely nothing. He's worthless. He's not contributing. He's not doing what he can with a little bit. Don't entrust him with more. He's not a productive person. And somehow, this guy, this wicked servant, gave himself permission to live on his own terms. He didn't think he had to live for the pleasure of another. He just took the easy road. And in so doing, he proves himself to be of a different spirit than the wise servants. The two wise servants enter into eternal joy while the sluggard is going to eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth. And this is a very serious warning for anyone who claims to be a servant in God's kingdom who is unwilling to work for the master. If we're just living for ourselves, if we're just taking the path of least resistance, doing the easy thing rather than doing the productive thing, we are not advancing the crown rights of King Jesus. And we show ourselves to be like this last servant. And so here we have, again, another parable on stewardship. Faithful living and faithful management of whatever life brings our way by the providential hand of God. We can't help what those things are. We must turn a profit on all of them. We are not free to hoard these resources, but we must put them to work under the lordship of Jesus Christ. One Puritan commentator said that resources are actually a lot like manure. If you just hoard them and pile them, it starts to stink really bad. But if you spread it out and you start putting it to work, it's actually an aid to fruitfulness. Put it to work. Don't just stockpile it for yourself. Put it to work. Make it fruitful. They're a stewardship. They're a trust. Ultimately, everything we have, whether it's resources or time or abilities, do belong to the master. But we are charged with managing them. We must. We're stewards. And a godly steward refuses to be satisfied with merely ending up where he starts. Godly wisdom wants to see abundance and fruitfulness and advance and flourishing. And so we ought to have that as our mindset, as our default mindset. Everything that life throws at you, whether it's a pleasant blessing or whether it's a hard blessing, the attitude must be one of fruitfulness. I'm not going to lay on the ground. saying, ow, ow, ow, and making excuses for my slothfulness or my wickedness. But I must say, God, if you've given this to me, this isn't what I would have asked for, but this is where we are. And I need to leverage that. I need to turn a profit on that for your glory and for my good. That is the mindset of these wise stewards. So again, we shouldn't reduce this just to money. This is about all of life, even if money is the teaching tool that Jesus uses. And that's where I want to leave us this morning, is to consider everything God has put in your hands, material or immaterial. Are we leveraging that to the best of our ability in the lordship of King Jesus and advancing his kingdom purposes? Let's pray. Father God, as we consider your providential hand of distributing gifts and abilities and resources as you please according to your creation, Lord, I pray that we would approach the stewardship that you have given us on its own terms, that we would not look over the shoulder to see what you've trusted another with, but rather that whether you have given us much or whether you have given us little or whether you have given us something in a different area than the next person, Lord, I pray that we would not look over with envy. I pray that we would not be slothful or lazy or consumed on ourselves or taking the easy path. Lord, but that whatever you put into our hands, that we would maximize its usefulness. that we would self-consciously be advancing your crown rights, that we would self-consciously be investing and reinvesting and working for our own good and for your ultimate glory. Lord, help us to see that these things are not an end in themselves, but are rather just tools meant to bring you glory. to advance your purposes. And so, Lord, I pray for each one here, whether you have given us much, whether you have given us little, whether you have given us this type of gift or that type of gift, Lord, I pray that we would leverage it all in the service of your kingdom, that we would make your name great, and that we would receive the commendation that these wise servants have received from you. I pray this all in the strong name of Jesus, and amen. Please stand. Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Naught be all else to me save that thou day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light. Be thou my wisdom, be thou my true word, ♪ By thy true song ♪ ♪ Thou in me dwelling and I with thee one ♪ ♪ Be thou my shield and my sword for the past ♪ ♪ Thou mine inheritance now and always ♪ ♪ Only first in my heart ♪ I, king of heaven, my treasure thou art ♪ I, king of heaven, my victory won ♪ May I reach heaven's joy, O bright heaven's sun Still be my vision, O Ruler. The parable of the talents reminds us of the importance of hard work and fruitfulness while we wait for the return of Christ. God placed man in a garden as his vice-regent to utilize, steward, and expand the elements of creation. He has likewise placed us in his kingdom for the same work, and it is fitting with his purposes that he would allocate his gifts according to how they are being managed most diligently. We are not to envy or wish we had the gifts of another, but rather are charged with being thankful for the gifts God has given to us and use them as wisely and as diligently as we are able. As we do this, we can expect that he will continue to give us more gifts and opportunities to steward for our good and his glory. And I'll leave you with the benediction from 1 Corinthians 15, verse 58. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. And go in peace.