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This brings us to a second truth about the Master. Somehow the third servant
forgot a very important fact of life. He forgot that the Lord of the Gift is
coming back.
(v19)
"After a long time the master of those servants returned and
settled accounts with them." Not only Jesus is the Lord of the Gift but he is
also the Lord of Settled Accounts. There is One before whom we will stand. He
is loving, holy, gracious, and just, but God wants us to know that one day we
will stand before him and give an account of our lives. This is what the third
servant forgot, which enabled him to justify - at least to himself - burying
his gift with so little concern.
A Comparison
Who do we identify with, within the story? Do we feel sorry for the man who
received only one talent? Let us note there are two variables in this story.
First, there are the varying amounts of the gifts. One man gets five, another
two, and the third gets one. In this detail I think Jesus is simply reflecting
on life as we experience it. Some people are more gifted in some ways than
others. This fact is not important here. The variable that does matter, is
what each servant does with what he's been given. In this story there are
three servants, normally Jesus uses two characters to make his point, but here
Jesus want to make it painstakingly clear that the size of the gift is not the
crucial factor.
Even though the first servant receives a gift larger than the second, the
master responds in identical fashion to each of them.
(v21 and v23)
as Jesus speaks to these first two servants, he praises them equally, even
though the amount of interest on the talent are different. Jesus wants us to
understand that the visible level of giftedness and calling is not the crucial
point here. Whether we are a five-talent, two-talent, or one-talent person is
not what counts in the long run.
We must refuse to compare our talents with anyone else. Comparison will lead
to pride and a false sense of superiority if we are ahead of someone, and
misery if we are behind. Or worse, we will discount and bury our irreplaceable
treasure that the Lord of the Gift has given to us. We have all done it,
compared ourselves to others, so don't feel guilty about it just don't do it
again. But we need to learn to identify, cultivate, invest, prize and enjoy
our own gifts that have been given us. God delights in you and has entrusted
to you with everything we need to fulfil the purpose for which we were created.
At the end of the day, God will not ask us why we did not live someone else's
life or invested someone else's gift. Comparison is not an adequate excuse for
the tragedy of an unopened gift.
When the Lord of the settled accounts came to the third servant, this servant
gives an excuse for his failure to invest what was graciously entrusted him by
the Lord of the Gift.
(v24)
"I knew that you a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering
where you have not scatted seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your
talent in the ground". He wanted a promise that nothing would go wrong, not a
command to do what's right. Fear makes people bury the treasure God has given
them.
In the master's reply we find a major surprise here. When the servant says
fear of the master stopped him, which is more of a excuse than anything else,
the master doesn't contradict him. The master does not say "I am really sorry
if I have upset you, I didn't mean to, I am really not like that - hard and
scary, lets forget the whole thing." No the master say, "You got it right,
your life and what you do with what I have given you, does matter. If you
thought I was looking for a return on my gift, then at least you should have
done something. You could have invested the money in a bank"
(Paraphrase of v26-27).
Fear is not an adequate excuse for the tragedy of an unopened gift. One of the
most sobering aspect of the story is that the servant is judged, not for doing
a bad things, but for doing nothing. He didn't steal or embezzle or defraud.
He merely buried his gift and did nothing. Jesus use two very serious words to
describe him,
(v26)
"wicked and lazy". Sloth as a spiritual sin is not the same as physical
laziness. It can co-exist with much busyness. Spiritual laziness is the
failure to do what needs to be done when it needs doing. It is like the
kamikaze pilot who flew seventeen missions! At its core, sloth consists of
loss of meaning, purpose, and hope, coupled with indifference to the welfare of
others. It is the opposite of zeal and joy in the service of God.
This aspect of the story, that Jesus came down so hard on the third servant
simply for inactivity has always troubled some people. To fail to be good
stewards of what God has given us is a form of theft, of stealing from God.
This story is about the sin of unrealised potential - the tragedy of the
unopened gift. This is why one of the great temptations most of us face that
could block us from getting out of the boat is comfort.
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