Latest / Reformed Thinking / Faithful Stewardship and the Master's Joy (Matthew 25:22-23)

Transcript

Faithful Stewardship and the Master's Joy (Matthew 25:22-23) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Well, imagine your boss calls you into his corner office on a
• 0:04
  Friday afternoon, and he hands you the administrative keys to a
• 0:08
  $50 million hedge fund. Oh wow, yeah, that is a massive
• 0:12
  amount of capital to just drop on someone, right?
• 0:14
  And he looks you dead in the eye and says, I am leaving the
• 0:17
  country indefinitely. Do not lose this capital.
• 0:19
  Multiply it. And then he just leaves.
• 0:21
  Yeah, he simply walks out the door, leaving you entirely alone
• 0:24
  with a staggering financial burden you never you never even
• 0:28
  asked for. There's a terrifying scenario.
• 0:30
  It really is. But that terrifying scenario is
• 0:32
  not some modern Wall Street fiction.
• 0:35
  It is the historical reality behind one of the most
• 0:38
  misunderstood teachings of Jesus Christ.
• 0:41
  So welcome to Reformed thinking. Today we are jumping into a deep
• 0:44
  dive on a specific massive passage of Scripture.
• 0:48
  We are looking at a highly detailed analysis the Matthew
• 0:50
  chapter 25 verses 22 and 23. Right, which is the account of
• 0:55
  the two talent bond servant from the parable of the talents.
• 0:58
  And you know, we have a very specific mission for this
• 1:00
  conversation. We really do.
• 1:02
  The natural human condition is basically trapped in a complete
• 1:05
  delusion of autonomy. Oh, absolutely.
• 1:08
  I mean, since the fall in Eden, man operates as he is the
• 1:11
  sovereign architect of his own life.
• 1:13
  Like he dictates his own terms, owns his own resources and
• 1:16
  directs his own destiny. Yeah, we.
• 1:18
  Like to think we are in charge, but our goal today is to shatter
• 1:21
  that delusion entirely. Right.
• 1:23
  We are bringing the focus squarely onto the reality of
• 1:26
  divine ownership and what theologians call eschatological
• 1:30
  accountability. Which means the reality that
• 1:32
  every single human being will face a final, inescapable day of
• 1:36
  judgment before a holy God. That is the precise issue at
• 1:39
  hand, and it could not be more urgent for the era we live in
• 1:44
  right now. Oh.
• 1:44
  For sure. Why do you say that?
• 1:46
  Well, when we look at the modern evangelical landscape, it is
• 1:49
  heavily saturated with pragmatic church growth strategies and
• 1:52
  with rampant consumerism and, you know, very Sox therapeutic
• 1:57
  deism. Therapeutic deism.
• 1:58
  Let us define that for the listener.
• 2:00
  Yeah, but therapeutic deism, I mean a worldview that treats God
• 2:03
  like a cosmic Butler, like he only exists to improve our
• 2:08
  earthly lives or fix our immediate problems and ensure
• 2:12
  our personal happiness. Right, a very man centered view.
• 2:15
  Exactly. I mean spot on.
• 2:17
  This passage gets straight through that noise.
• 2:19
  We are presenting the absolute sovereign authority of the
• 2:22
  returning King and the massive weight of Christian stewardship.
• 2:25
  Because this text confronts your conscience, it asks A terrifying
• 2:29
  yet glorious question, which is what are you doing with the
• 2:33
  Masters investments? Right.
• 2:35
  And to answer that, we really have to establish the historical
• 2:38
  setting, because context is everything.
• 2:40
  Yeah, we are not reading a fairy tale here.
• 2:42
  We are looking at a real moment in history.
• 2:44
  We are The year is roughly 8033. The location is the Mount of
• 2:48
  Olives, just outside the city gates of Jerusalem.
• 2:50
  And Jesus is delivering what is known as the Olivet Discourse.
• 2:54
  This is just days before his crucifixion.
• 2:55
  Right, Yes, and the atmosphere is incredibly tense.
• 2:58
  He is speaking to an Israel that is entirely entrenched in
• 3:01
  apostasy. They have completely turned
• 3:03
  away. Yeah, the nation's religious
• 3:05
  leaders have rejected the Messiah, and as a result, the
• 3:09
  nation is facing judicial hardening.
• 3:11
  Meaning God is actively handing them over to their own
• 3:14
  rebellion. Right.
• 3:16
  And they are facing eminent catastrophic destruction at the
• 3:20
  hands of the Romans. So the historical and cultural
• 3:22
  context here really dictates how we read every single word.
• 3:25
  It does. Jesus is preparing his disciples
• 3:28
  for an extended, unprecedented period, a time where the King
• 3:32
  will be physically absent from the earth, yet reigning supreme
• 3:36
  from the right hand of the Father.
• 3:37
  OK, so to grasp the parable we have to clarify the ancient Near
• 3:41
  Eastern economic reality, because in modern English when
• 3:45
  we use the word talent, we mean a natural aptitude.
• 3:48
  Right. Like maybe you have a talent for
• 3:49
  singing or you are highly skilled at mathematics.
• 3:53
  We have totally psychologized the word.
• 3:55
  We really have, but the Greek word used here, talenton, meant
• 3:59
  something entirely different. Yeah, it was the heaviest unit
• 4:01
  of weight for precious metals, usually silver or gold.
• 4:04
  Historically, one single talent equals 6000 denarii.
• 4:08
  OK, let us unpack the math on that, because the sheer scale
• 4:11
  changes everything we assume about this story.
• 4:14
  It really does. So a denarius was the standard
• 4:17
  day's wage for a common laborer or a Roman soldier in the
• 4:20
  ancient world. So a single talent equals 20
• 4:24
  years of grueling, unbroken manual labor. 20 years just for
• 4:29
  one. Right.
• 4:30
  And the servant in verse 22 receives 2 talents, that is 40
• 4:34
  years of wages. It is an entire working lifetime
• 4:37
  of capital condensed into a single handover.
• 4:40
  Which brings us back to that absentee CEO analogy.
• 4:43
  This was not a small side project or a minor test of
• 4:47
  character. This was a massive trust.
• 4:49
  It was an astronomical sum which destroys the modern assumption
• 4:53
  that the two talent man was handed something insignificant
• 4:55
  or manageable. Yeah, he was holding a fortune.
• 4:57
  And you have to understand, absentee landlordism was
• 5:00
  extremely common in the Roman Empire.
• 5:02
  Wealthy aristocrats would travel to distant provinces for
• 5:05
  political or business reasons. And they would leave vast
• 5:07
  wealthy estates in the hands of trusted bondservants.
• 5:11
  Yes, and defaulting on that trust carried severe legal and
• 5:15
  physical consequences, often ending in imprisonment or death.
• 5:19
  Wow, so Jesus is using very intense imagery.
• 5:23
  He is defining the unfathomable value of the gospel, the
• 5:26
  entrusted truths of Scripture, and the indwelling might of the
• 5:29
  Holy Spirit. He is saying I am handing you
• 5:31
  the most valuable commodities in the universe and I am leaving.
• 5:35
  That is a staggering thought, and looking at the literary
• 5:38
  architecture of Matthew chapters 24 and 25, I have a serious
• 5:41
  question about how this is structured.
• 5:43
  Sure, what is it? Well, the Olivet Discourse moves
• 5:46
  from the chronological signs of the future tribulation, things
• 5:49
  like wars, famines, and the abomination of Desolation,
• 5:52
  straight into a series of urgent parables about readiness.
• 5:56
  The focus shifts to application, right?
• 5:58
  And in chapter 25 we see a specific triptych of judgement.
• 6:02
  We get the parable of the 10 virgins, then the parable of the
• 6:04
  talents, and finally the judgement of the sheep and
• 6:06
  goats. That is the sequence, yeah.
• 6:08
  But wait. Why does the story about
• 6:10
  relentless working, which is the talents, come immediately after
• 6:14
  the story of the 10 Virgins? The Virgins is entirely about
• 6:17
  waiting. Right.
• 6:18
  The virgins are just sitting there in the dark.
• 6:19
  Yeah. It feels like theological
• 6:21
  whiplash to go from just wait to work yourself to the bone.
• 6:25
  Well, that tension is deliberate.
• 6:28
  The arrangement is a brilliant progression of theological
• 6:31
  logic, because waiting without working is presumption, while
• 6:35
  working without waiting is pragmatism.
• 6:38
  OK, break that down for me. Sure, the parable of the 10
• 6:40
  virgins addresses inward readiness.
• 6:43
  The oil in their lamps represents genuine regeneration,
• 6:46
  the new birth. So it exposes the severe danger
• 6:49
  of superficial religious profession, people who look the
• 6:51
  part but have no inward life. Yes, but Jesus immediately
• 6:56
  transitions to the talents to prove that true inward readiness
• 6:59
  inevitably produces outward, diligent labor.
• 7:03
  If you possess the inward reality of salvation, it will
• 7:05
  manifest in relentless outward obedience.
• 7:08
  Following that, the sheep and the goats provide the final
• 7:11
  public evidence of that labor on the great day of judgement.
• 7:14
  So the progression is flawless. It goes inner life, outward
• 7:18
  labor, final vindication. Absolutely.
• 7:21
  So if true readiness requires concrete action, we need to look
• 7:25
  closely at the grammatical mechanics of how the two talent
• 7:28
  man reports his actions to the Master in verse 22.
• 7:31
  Yes, the text there is incredibly precise.
• 7:34
  It says the servant approaches and says, Master, you delivered
• 7:37
  to me two talents. Here I have made two talents
• 7:40
  more. On the surface, it sounds like a
• 7:42
  simple accounting report. Right, but there is so much
• 7:44
  happening beneath the English translation isn't?
• 7:47
  There, oh there is. The grammar of this verse
• 7:50
  operates as a theological road map.
• 7:52
  The servant addresses the master as Kyrie, which translates to
• 7:56
  Lord. And in the context of Matthew's
• 7:59
  Gospel, that means something specific.
• 8:00
  Yeah, this is not a polite greeting.
• 8:02
  This is a direct recognition of absolute deity and total
• 8:05
  ownership. Then we see the Greek a wrist
• 8:08
  active participle laboon translating to having received
• 8:13
  notice that this completely defines the man.
• 8:15
  What do you mean? The Greek literally identifies
• 8:17
  him as the one who received. He's identified first and
• 8:21
  foremost by what he was given not, but what he produced.
• 8:24
  Oh, that is fascinating. He acknowledges the antecedent
• 8:27
  grace of the master's endowment before he ever mentions his own
• 8:30
  labor. That structural order is just
• 8:32
  staggering. His entire identity is wrapped
• 8:34
  up in what he was handed, and that ties directly into the
• 8:37
  bedrock doctrine of God's eternal decrees and Providence.
• 8:41
  It really does. The servant did not choose his
• 8:43
  portion. No, he didn't apply for the two
• 8:45
  talent position on a job board. He didn't negotiate his
• 8:48
  endowment with the master. No, he had no say in it.
• 8:51
  This completely shatters the modern idol of the self-made
• 8:55
  individual. You know, we love to think we
• 8:57
  pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps.
• 8:59
  We do, but it is a myth. The reality is everything we
• 9:02
  possess, our intellect, our physical health, our financial
• 9:07
  resources. Our geographic location.
• 9:09
  The precise historical epic we were born into.
• 9:13
  All of it. It is all a sovereign
• 9:14
  dispensation from the hand of God.
• 9:17
  You didn't choose your parents and you didn't choose the
• 9:19
  neurochemistry of your brain, right?
• 9:22
  God is the sovereign proprietor of all things, and we are
• 9:24
  temporary custodians. And that is actually very
• 9:27
  freeing. It kills human pride instantly
• 9:30
  because you didn't earn your starting capital.
• 9:32
  Everything you have is an unmerited gift.
• 9:35
  And it also kills Envy, doesn't it?
• 9:37
  Absolutely, because God, in his unsearchable wisdom, sovereignly
• 9:42
  chose the precise measure you could handle.
• 9:45
  You have no grounds to resent the individual who received 5
• 9:49
  talents, and you have no grounds to look down upon the individual
• 9:52
  who received one. Your only duty is fidelity to
• 9:55
  the specific portion decreed for your life.
• 9:57
  Yeah, and when you grasp this, it produces massive peace.
• 10:01
  You are freed from the crushing weight of trying to be someone
• 10:04
  else. Hold on though, if God
• 10:06
  determines that initial endowment and we have absolutely
• 10:09
  no say in the starting capital, how does the master evaluate the
• 10:12
  return? That is the big question.
• 10:14
  The pressure must be immense. And that brings us to the
• 10:16
  Master's metric in verse 23. The master replies, Well done,
• 10:20
  good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a
• 10:23
  little. I will set you over much.
• 10:25
  The Greek text here contains some of the most exalted
• 10:28
  language in the New Testament. Unpack that for us.
• 10:30
  Well, the Master responds with the exclamation Eugene, meaning
• 10:34
  excellent. It is an adverb of intense
• 10:37
  divine delight, a very rare word in Scripture.
• 10:40
  Oh wow, so it is high praise. Very high.
• 10:43
  The master praises the man as a Gothos, meaning morally
• 10:47
  excellent and fulfilling his design purpose.
• 10:50
  He also calls him Pistos, meaning absolutely trustworthy
• 10:53
  and reliable. OK, so he is good and faithful.
• 10:56
  Furthermore, the man is addressed as a doulos, A
• 10:58
  bondservant or slave. And we must define this
• 11:01
  carefully. Yes, in the ancient world, a
• 11:04
  doulos was not a hired employee who could quit at will or
• 11:07
  negotiate a better contract. He was the legal property of the
• 11:10
  master. Right.
• 11:11
  Possessing no independent autonomy whatsoever, his labor
• 11:14
  belonged entirely to his Lord. Yeah, here's the most shocking
• 11:17
  fact of the entire text, Something that completely upends
• 11:21
  our corporate sensibilities. What is that?
• 11:23
  The Masters Commendation to the Two Talent Man is a verbatim,
• 11:27
  word for word repetition of his commendation to the five Talent
• 11:30
  Man. It is identical.
• 11:31
  Let that sink in, The guy who brought back 5 talents and the
• 11:35
  guy who brought back two talents get the exact same praise?
• 11:39
  The verbal reward is identical, yes.
• 11:41
  If you are the guy who doubled the five talents, you might be
• 11:43
  thinking, hey, I brought back more than double with this other
• 11:46
  guy produced. Where is my extra praise?
• 11:49
  Yeah, but that identical repetition is the Holy Spirit's
• 11:53
  way of crushing modern seeker sensitive pragmatism.
• 11:57
  So. The master judges based on
• 12:00
  proportion, not raw output. Both the five talent man and the
• 12:05
  two talent man yielded a 100% return on their sovereignly
• 12:09
  distributed capital. Oh, that makes so much sense.
• 12:11
  The world measures success by platform size, financial
• 12:14
  accumulation and visible influence, and the modern Church
• 12:17
  often adopts this secular metric.
• 12:19
  Right, assuming the mega church pastor is somehow more favored
• 12:22
  by God than the small town minister.
• 12:24
  But the master measures success by unyielding fidelity to the
• 12:27
  trust. So a bi vocational pastor
• 12:30
  laboring faithfully in a tiny forgotten rural church, visiting
• 12:35
  the sick and preaching the word faithfully to 50 people faces
• 12:38
  the precise same standard as a renowned theologian preaching to
• 12:42
  thousands in a metropolitan center.
• 12:44
  Yes, the evaluation is about faithfulness with the assigned
• 12:48
  portion. If the Commendation is
• 12:50
  identical, the reward must be equally stunning.
• 12:53
  It is we reached the climax of the passage.
• 12:55
  The reward has two distinct phases, right?
• 12:58
  I will set you over much and enter into the joy of your
• 13:02
  master. Let us look at that first
• 13:03
  phrase. Yeah, let's break that down
• 13:05
  because it sounds like getting promoted after a grueling shift.
• 13:08
  Look at the contrast between a little the Greek word olea and
• 13:12
  polloon. OK, Olea and Polloon.
• 13:14
  Remember, our earlier Math 2 talents equaled 40 years of
• 13:18
  human rages. In our eyes, that is a
• 13:21
  staggering fortune. Yeah, that is a massive amount
• 13:23
  of wealth. Yet the Master calls it a little
• 13:26
  God's economy dwarfs human comprehension.
• 13:28
  So what is the much he has set over?
• 13:30
  The reward for faithfulness is actual administration and
• 13:33
  authority in the coming millennial Kingdom.
• 13:36
  Wow, so it is actual work. Yes.
• 13:39
  Heaven is not a static existence where we sit on clouds strumming
• 13:43
  harps in a state of eternal boredom.
• 13:45
  It involves active, dynamic labor governance and authority
• 13:50
  alongside the King of Kings. That is a totally different view
• 13:54
  of eternity. You are being trained right now
• 13:57
  in the Crucible of this life to administer the cosmos in the
• 14:00
  next. And the crown jewel of that
• 14:02
  reward is the final command. Enter into the joy of your
• 14:05
  master. The Greek word there is Cara,
• 14:08
  indicating an ecstatic, overwhelming gladness.
• 14:11
  This makes me think of CS Lewis and his famous mud pies analogy.
• 14:15
  Oh, that is a great parallel. Right Lewis pointed out that we
• 14:19
  are half hearted creatures fooling around with earthly
• 14:22
  ambition and temporal wealth when infinite joy is offered to
• 14:25
  us. As he said, we are like an
• 14:26
  ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum
• 14:29
  because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a
• 14:31
  holiday at the sea. We really do settle, don't we?
• 14:34
  We settle for the mud pies of human applause.
• 14:36
  Bigger houses and retirement funds.
• 14:38
  While Christ offers us entrance into Trinitarian delight, we are
• 14:42
  invited into the very joy that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
• 14:46
  have shared since before time began.
• 14:48
  That is beautiful, Yeah. Entering the joy of the Master
• 14:51
  means participating in the very satisfaction of God Himself.
• 14:54
  It is crossing the threshold of glorification.
• 14:57
  It is huge, you know. Extra biblical Greco Roman
• 14:59
  literature often relegated the word Kaya to temporal
• 15:02
  festivities like parties, military victories, temporary
• 15:06
  celebrations. It's fleeting moments.
• 15:07
  Right. But Christ elevates it to the
• 15:10
  internal state of the justified believer.
• 15:12
  It is a joy that is impervious to suffering, a joy that is
• 15:15
  completely secure. OK, I have to pause the
• 15:18
  narrative right here because we are hitting a massive
• 15:22
  theological wall. What is that?
• 15:23
  The standard laid out in this text is absolute, flawless
• 15:26
  faithfulness. The Master demands a perfect
• 15:28
  return, but human beings are entirely flawed.
• 15:32
  Yes, we are. I know my own heart.
• 15:33
  Left to ourselves, our motives are mixed, our desires are
• 15:36
  selfish, and even our best, most diligent labor is stained with
• 15:40
  sin. It is tainted.
• 15:41
  I might work hard, but half the time I want the credit for it,
• 15:44
  you know? So if the requirement is
• 15:46
  absolute fidelity, how can any listener actually achieve this
• 15:51
  commendation? It feels like we are being set
• 15:53
  up for failure. I'm glad you brought that up.
• 15:56
  That friction drives us directly to the Christological
• 15:59
  fulfillment of the parable. OK, walk us through that.
• 16:01
  If you look at this text just as a moral To Do List, you will be
• 16:05
  crushed by despair. We must view this text through
• 16:08
  the lens of Christ's perfect work.
• 16:11
  So Christ is in the parable. Yes, Jesus Christ is the
• 16:14
  sovereign Master who ascended. He's the nobleman traveling to a
• 16:18
  far country. But He is also the ultimate good
• 16:21
  and faithful Servant prophesied in Isaiah chapter 53 verse 11.
• 16:25
  Oh, which states by his knowledge, shall the righteous
• 16:27
  one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous?
• 16:30
  Precisely. Jesus perfectly multiplied the
• 16:33
  glory of the Father. He yielded an infinite return
• 16:35
  through His active and passive obedience.
• 16:37
  Let us define those terms for the listener.
• 16:39
  Active and passive obedience. By active obedience we mean he
• 16:43
  perfectly kept the whole law of God in our place.
• 16:47
  Every thought, every deed was perfectly faithful.
• 16:49
  And passive obedience. By passive obedience we mean he
• 16:52
  willingly suffered the wrath of God on the cross, paying the
• 16:56
  penalty for our sinful laziness and rebellion.
• 16:59
  So let me make sure I am grasping this clearly.
• 17:02
  Our flawed stewardship is only acceptable because we are united
• 17:06
  by faith to Christ, like His perfect scorecard is handed to
• 17:10
  us. Absolutely.
• 17:11
  Justification is by faith alone in Christ alone.
• 17:14
  Our labor is not a wage we earn to purchase salvation.
• 17:17
  That would be a workspace religion.
• 17:19
  Right. Rather, our lieber is the
• 17:21
  necessary vindicating proof of our genuine union with the
• 17:24
  Master. Saint Augustine famously said
• 17:27
  God crowns his own gifts. Grace crowns Grace the.
• 17:30
  Reward is a reward of grace, not of debt.
• 17:32
  God sovereignly gives the capital, He sovereignly works
• 17:35
  the obedience within us through His Spirit, and then He
• 17:37
  sovereignly rewards the very works His grace produced.
• 17:40
  You are not striving to earn the Masters love, you are laboring
• 17:43
  out of immense gratitude because His perfect record have already
• 17:48
  been imputed to your account. That is the most freeing truth
• 17:51
  in the world. But practically speaking, if the
• 17:55
  requirement is strict and our justification is entirely secure
• 17:58
  in Christ, how do we get the actual strength to labor while
• 18:02
  we wait in this fallen world? That is the day-to-day struggle.
• 18:05
  Right. I wake up on a Tuesday morning
• 18:07
  feeling exhausted. How do I deploy my talents when
• 18:10
  the world feels hostile and my own flesh is weak?
• 18:12
  Well, the Ascended Christ did not leave us as orphans.
• 18:16
  He sent the Holy Spirit to indwell and equip the Church.
• 18:20
  Now we must clarify A crucial point regarding the talents in
• 18:23
  our current era. OK.
• 18:24
  What is that? Holding strictly to a
• 18:26
  cessationist view, the talents today are not new extra biblical
• 18:29
  revelations. They are not the Apostolic sign,
• 18:32
  gifts of tongues, prophecy, or physical healing which ceased
• 18:36
  with the closing of the biblical Canon.
• 18:38
  So we do not need new signs. No, we have the complete
• 18:41
  revelation of God today. The talents represent the
• 18:44
  completed Word of God and the ordinary means of grace.
• 18:48
  OK, let's break down that phrase ordinary means of grace, because
• 18:50
  it sounds like seminary jargon. What does that actually look
• 18:53
  like in the life of a believer? It refers to the everyday tools
• 18:57
  God uses to strengthen his people, things like the faithful
• 19:01
  preaching of the Word, public and private prayer, and the
• 19:05
  administration of the sacraments, which are baptism
• 19:08
  and the Lord's Supper. So very basic regular church
• 19:11
  life. Yes, these seem ordinary, even
• 19:15
  mundane, to the watching world, but they are the divine conduits
• 19:19
  of spiritual might. The Holy Spirit provides the
• 19:22
  strength to deploy these ordinary means faithfully.
• 19:24
  That makes total sense. When you submit yourself to the
• 19:27
  preaching of the Word, when you labor in prayer, you are trading
• 19:30
  with the Master's talents. Since we possess the completed
• 19:33
  Word of God, the empowering strength of the Holy Spirit, and
• 19:36
  the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, there are
• 19:38
  absolutely no excuses for spiritual laziness.
• 19:41
  None at all. We have to apply this directly
• 19:43
  to our current cultural moment. We must use what theologians
• 19:47
  call the third use of the law. Which is very vital.
• 19:50
  For those unfamiliar, the third use of the law is how the moral
• 19:53
  commands of Scripture guide the believers grateful obedience.
• 19:57
  The law no longer condemns us, but it shows us how to please
• 20:00
  the Father. Application is non negotiable
• 20:02
  here. We cannot just analyze the Greek
• 20:04
  and walk away right? This text systematically
• 20:07
  dismantles 3 massive errors plaguing the visible church
• 20:12
  today. OK, let's go through them.
• 20:13
  What is the first one? First, it obliterates the
• 20:16
  prosperity gospel. Absolutely.
• 20:17
  False teachers treat the talents as a divine pyramid scheme
• 20:21
  designed for earthly wealth and physical health.
• 20:24
  They tell you that if you give them seed money, God will make
• 20:27
  you a millionaire. It is just terrible.
• 20:29
  It is an outright corruption of the text.
• 20:32
  The talents represent the weighty stewardship of the
• 20:34
  gospel, demanding sacrifice and suffering, not feeding human
• 20:38
  greed. Right, the master doesn't
• 20:40
  commend the servant for buying a chariot and a villa, right?
• 20:43
  He commends him from multiplying the masters of state.
• 20:45
  Spot on. So what is the second error?
• 20:48
  Second, it destroys Roman Catholic works righteousness,
• 20:51
  specifically the dogma of condign merit.
• 20:54
  Condign merit. Explain that.
• 20:56
  Condign merit is the belief that human works performed with the
• 21:00
  help of grace actually purchase or merit eternal life.
• 21:04
  We firmly reject that. Yes, completely.
• 21:07
  As we established the servants, labor is the fruit of salvation,
• 21:10
  not the root. The master's reward is entirely
• 21:13
  an act of grace. The servant is only doing what
• 21:16
  is commanded. He has no grounds to boast
• 21:18
  before God. And the third error brings it
• 21:20
  right to our front door. He does.
• 21:23
  This text directly confronts nominal Christianity and sloth.
• 21:27
  It attacks the One Talent mentality of burying the truth
• 21:31
  out of fear, apathy, or sheer laziness.
• 21:33
  Yeah, we love to think we are the five talent OR 2 Talent
• 21:36
  guys, but many modern churchgoers act exactly well.
• 21:39
  They act identically to the wicked servant who buried his
• 21:41
  treasure in the dirt. It is a harsh reality, you know.
• 21:44
  The one talent man had a distorted view of the master.
• 21:47
  He viewed him as a hard, unreasonable tyrant, and that
• 21:50
  theological error produced paralyzing fear and inaction.
• 21:53
  That theology always produces bad fruit.
• 21:56
  Always when Christians view God casually or view his commands as
• 22:00
  optional suggestions, they bury the gospel.
• 22:03
  Let's bring in some specific statistics to highlight that
• 22:06
  third error, the sheer sloth of the modern age.
• 22:10
  Let's hear it. Recent studies show that only 10
• 22:12
  to 15% of professing Christians tithe to their local church.
• 22:17
  That means the vast majority of people sitting in the pews are
• 22:19
  consuming the resources of the church without contributing
• 22:22
  anything. That is heartbreaking.
• 22:24
  At the same time, the average adult squanders roughly 3 hours
• 22:27
  a day scrolling through the digital Vanity Fair of social
• 22:30
  media while spending mere minutes, if any time at all, in
• 22:35
  the Word of God. Wow, this is a wicked burying of
• 22:38
  the Master's resources. We are squandering the vapor of
• 22:41
  life on algorithmic entertainment, watching mindless
• 22:43
  videos while the glorious gospel gathers dust on a shelf.
• 22:47
  It is an abhorrent reality. Christ demands a return on his
• 22:51
  investment. To whom much is given, much will
• 22:53
  be required. Yeah, every hour is a trust.
• 22:55
  Every hour of time, every dollar in your bank account, every
• 22:58
  ounce of physical energy is a stewardship.
• 23:01
  Yet we must balance this severe challenge with genuine comfort
• 23:07
  for the two talent believers. Yes.
• 23:08
  Comfort is needed here. The text frees you from the
• 23:12
  paralyzing poison of comparison. You are not required to be John
• 23:16
  Calvin or Charles Spurgeon, right?
• 23:18
  You are not commanded to write systematic theologies or preach
• 23:21
  to thousands. That is such a vital point.
• 23:24
  The enemy loves to use comparison to breed
• 23:26
  discouragement. We look at the five talent
• 23:28
  Christian on Instagram or at a conference and we think my
• 23:31
  little life doesn't matter. Why even try?
• 23:34
  The total opposite is true if God has sovereignly decreed you
• 23:37
  to be an accountant managing church finances and obscurity,
• 23:40
  or a mother teaching the catechism to toddlers at the
• 23:42
  kitchen table. The Lord demands fidelity with
• 23:45
  that specific flock. It is about faithfulness where
• 23:48
  you are. Yes, your hidden, quiet labor is
• 23:51
  seen, measured and eternally valued by the Master.
• 23:54
  The Mother wiping noses and teaching her children the
• 23:56
  Scriptures is engaged in Kingdom administration just as surely as
• 24:00
  the pulpit minister. The Master is looking for
• 24:03
  faithfulness, not fame. Absolutely.
• 24:05
  As we wrap up this deep dive into Matthew 25, let's recap the
• 24:09
  core themes we have uncovered today.
• 24:11
  Sure, the Christian life is not a playground.
• 24:13
  It is a blood bought stewardship.
• 24:15
  We are waiting for the Bema seat of Christ.
• 24:18
  Which is the judgment seat where every deed done in the body will
• 24:21
  be evaluated by eyes of blazing fire.
• 24:24
  I want to leave you with a final searing reality to Mull over as
• 24:28
  you go about your week. The shadows of this present evil
• 24:31
  age are lengthening. The time of the Masters return
• 24:34
  is drawing rapidly near. It is on the great day of
• 24:37
  reckoning. The facades of your earthly
• 24:39
  resumes, the size of your bank accounts and your carefully
• 24:42
  curated social standing will burn away like chaff in the
• 24:45
  wind. All of it.
• 24:46
  The only metric that will survive the holy fire of His
• 24:49
  gaze is whether you were faithful with the specific
• 24:51
  portion He handed you. Look to the nail scarred
• 24:54
  sovereign, rely entirely on His imputed righteousness, drop the
• 24:58
  mud pies of worldly ambition, and labor relentlessly for the
• 25:02
  holiday at the sea. Thank you for joining us on
• 25:04
  Reformed Thinking.