You Can Be Prepared

You would turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter twenty-five, I want to begin reading at verse fourteen, if you would turn there please. In this parable Jesus has told us something really important about God the Father. He focused the first part on who the Father was and he uses a story of a man who has a business as a way to describe the characteristics and nature of God. He talks about first of all that God is the one who is in charge of everything in the world like a man is in charge of his whole business and in charge of everything that goes on there and that way God is in charge of the world and all the people who live in the world as a man who owns a business is in charge of the people who work for him. He also tells us in this story that God is like a man who has a business and he's gone away for a while and he brings people and talks to them and he gives them instructions about what they are to do. God tells every one of us what we are to do. The instructions in the Bible are guides for us as to what he wants us to do. In this story Jesus describes God as one who says to people, I have assignments for you and he gives those assignments based on the ability or skill of the people who are there. And then it tells us that God expects of us as his followers to be productive for him. A man in a business wants somebody to produce what the business produces. In this instance the Father says to us you are to be productive about what I want you to do and what God is in the business of doing is changing the nature and character of people. He wants people to become holy as he is holy so he holds up before us his very nature and character saying this is the way I want you to be. He also tells us he wants us to be about helping other people come into the kingdom of God. That's the command he gave to all of us so that's his business. He gives people the responsibility to do what he wants them to do and the ability to be able to do that. And then the story teaches that God holds every single one of us accountable for the assignments that he gives us. There is a time of accountability. So while a parable tells us something about the nature of God, it also tells us something about people in our human circumstances, how we live in this world, the difficulties that we face. Here is the story. And it will be like a man going on a journey who calls his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also the one with two talents gained two more. But the man who had received one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. After a long time, the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five talents brought the other five. Master, he said, you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more. His master replied, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness. The man with two talents came. Master, he said, you entrusted me with two talents. See I have gained two more. His master replied, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness. Then the man who had received the one talent came. Master, he said, I knew you were a hard man, harvesting where you had not sown, gathering where you had not gathered seed, so I was afraid. I went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you. His master replied, you wicked, lazy servant. So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown, gather where I have not scattered seed. Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the banker so that when I return, I would have received it back with interest. Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. In this story, Jesus reveals a lot about our situation and our relationship with him. All of us, he says, are like people who are owned by another, slaves, the word translated here in this version as servants, but it's really the word for a slave, someone owned by another. And when we're born into the world, all of us seem to think of ourselves as individuals free to be able to do whatever we want from the time we start our lives. Terrible twos, we want to be doing it by ourselves. We want to have our own way. We want to live the way we want to and do exactly what we want to. Now, we're more sophisticated when we get to be 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 and 80 about our terrible two attitude, but the attitude is the same. No, I will do it the way I want to. But in this story, Jesus presents God as the one who has given us life, like the man who owns a slave, saying, you really belong to me. Now, you may think of yourself as independent. You may think of yourself as self-sufficient. But the Bible does not present our life that way. We are indeed people made by another, created for a purpose, and placed in this world to be responsible to God. Everyone in the world is responsible to God. We have an accountability to him because he's the one that created us. We have an accountability to him because he is the one who has given us the opportunity of life in the place where we live with the circumstances that we face. This is another thing he tells us. To each of these people that the owner had, he gave to them responsibilities that fit what they could do, each person according to their ability. Now, in this story, he gives them a talent of money, all kinds of ideas about what a talent was. It's really a weight of measurement, 50 to 80 pounds I've seen people suggest as a measurement for it. I guess, if it was silver, that it's probably worth $35,000 for one talent. So here's a man with five, and he's got about $170,000 that he's accountable for, and his master thinks that he can do this. Now, he's a slave. But you see, in the Roman world, slavery was a little different than it is for us. For example, in the Roman world, a slave, even though he was a slave of someone else, could own personal property for himself. He could buy a business or a farm or anything he wanted as long as he had the money. He was still a slave of someone who owned him, but he had this right to be able to live some of his own life. And even as a slave, he might receive a salary from his owner. For example, he sells himself into slavery because his business has gone broke and he has to be in slavery for 10 years as his agreement. But if he's skilled, his owner might say, in addition to your debt that I'm paying off for you, I'll give you so much money a year. And if he saved it and invested it, he could buy property or even start a business of his own. And if he was skilled, if his owner had hired him or brought him or bought him for this purpose, he might give him a bonus if he performed well during the year. It was not like slaves were penniless. It was not like they had no rights. They did have rights and opportunities. So each of these now are given something that they can use. They might have had an agreement to be able to say, if you do something profitable with this, then I'll share with you part of the profit. We don't know the details of the arrangement, but each one of them knew that the master expected some profitable exercise on their part with his resources. So God has placed all of us in this world, each one of us with different abilities, each one of us in different locations. But there's one thing in common. He has given you the opportunity that fits the abilities and skill that you have to be productive for him. Now this productivity is not a matter of money in the story that's here, even though he uses that as an example. The productivity is spiritual for you. What is it God wants for you? He wants you to become like Christ himself. Whenever we surrender ourselves to Christ and say, I'm going to live my life in obedience to you, he wants us to be able to be shaped into the very nature of Jesus Christ. So you look at yourself. Jesus Christ is here with these qualities in his life, and you put yourself beside him. What is the difference between you and Jesus? Are there some qualities that Jesus has that you don't have? Then God is at work trying to change those. And every time you identify, say, a bad temper that you have, you say, Lord, I don't see you ever cussing people out, but once in a while it comes to me and I get so angry I just lose control. Make me like you. And whenever you start changing, and God gives you ability to control your mind and your tongue and your heart, and you see that suddenly he's given you the power over that till you can no longer do it, everyone around you, everyone around you who knows you knows the next time a situation comes up in which you would normally lose it, and all of a sudden you don't, they know that something has happened in you. They may not say anything, and they usually won't, hardly ever say anything immediately, but somewhere down the road someone will say, you know, I've noticed you used to lose your temper and use bad language, but you don't do that anymore. See in that situation you have become light and righteousness in the middle of darkness. You have become a witness to the power of God, and this is your great opportunity now to say to that person, you're right. I used to lose my temper, and I used to use language that I was ashamed of, but I started asking God to change my heart and my mind because I'd given him my life, but here is a part of me that just didn't work right, and now he has changed the way I think. He's given me control over my mind and my tongue, and now I'm living a different way than I used to. God has power to change people's lives. He's done it in me. That's your witness. You are testifying to that person about the power of God, the love of God, and what it means to allow God to control your life. You are productive in the kingdom of God. Now every one of us have different problems in our lives. You may not have ever cussed in all of your life, but I'm sure you have something in your life that God is just itching to get his fingers on to change you about. If you've yielded your life to God, it is an ongoing, lifelong process. That's what this story is about. God calls us to himself, and he says, you belong to me. Now here is the way I want you to live. You know, not everybody in the world is willing to live the way God wants them. Some people are willing to accept the idea there's a God, but they say, no one's going to tell me what to do. No one's going to make me live like I don't want to. I want to make my own choices. I want to do what I think is right. But here there are two of the servants who immediately begin to do exactly what their master and their Lord told them they should do. But not everyone's that way. One of the servants, whenever he was given the orders and instruction, took his gifts, took his talents, took his opportunities, took everything that God gave him, and said, I'm going to do exactly what I want to do. Now he knew he'd have to account to his master someday, so he did what seemed right in his own mind. If you had gone to somebody in the days of Jesus and said, I have a lot of money, $35,000, and I'd like to be able to keep that money safe, what can I do with it? They would have said, go out and find a kind of secret place and dig a hole in the ground and bury your money and camouflage it just a little bit so nobody knows you've dug that hole and it will be safe and secure. This was the most safe thing that a person could do with money. And this man, in his own wisdom, said, when my boss comes back and he asks me what I've done with his money, if I risk it in the stock market, if I risk it in investing, I might lose some of it, and boy, he could really get on me for it. So I've decided, instead of doing what I know he wanted me to do, to do what I think is the safest thing for me. So he went and dug a hole and buried the money. And then he did whatever he wanted to do. Now we don't know what the other two that made their money did. I'm sure they worried about the money. I'm sure they looked for investments. I'm sure they made every opportunity to invest this money so that they could do something with it. And boy, they doubled it, a hundred percent gain. But this man had nothing to do because his money was dug in the ground in a hole. He had nothing to do. He lived his life from that moment on doing exactly what he wanted to do. Now he may have said to himself, I didn't steal any of that money. I'm a good man. He may have said to himself, I'm not going to lose any money from my owner. I'm a good man. But it wasn't exactly what his boss wanted him to do. It wasn't at all what he wanted him to do. The time came for an accounting and the owner came back. He called each man before him. What Jesus is telling us is, you don't get by with this. Each one of us will someday look God straight in the eye and he will say, what have you done with your life? What have you achieved with your life? What would you point to? Excuse me. You can say, well, I've had a good family. I've had a home and I've had a business career, worked at a business, worked in my life and now I'm retired and I'm just waiting for the end of my life to come. You think God is going to see that as productive for his kingdom? What he's looking for, you know, is for you to say, here's what I've done for you, Father. I knew that people wanted to be, that you wanted people to enter your kingdom and here are the things I've done to try to help them. Whenever I came into your kingdom, I wasn't the kind of person you wanted me to be and I've really worked hard to try to present to you my own life the way it is and ask you to transform me to a different kind of person. I really can look back and see that I've changed over the years to become more and more like you. That's what he wants to hear from each of us. Some of us start off at a different place than others. I grew up in a home where my mother had me in church every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night. And I lived in a place where it was illegal to have alcohol, so I never saw that or was tempted with it. So it's a little easier for me to bypass some of the sins that a lot of people are confronted with. Because we all start, you see, at different places, to each according to his ability. He gives each one of us the responsibility based on our circumstances. So you had a start somewhere. Maybe your start wasn't as good as mine spiritually, but you had a start. What God looks at is where you start and how you've moved from that. Don't blame your bad life, spiritual life, on your parents or your cousin or your aunts or your uncles or your grandparents. You look at where you started, and God's judgment is, from there, what have you done with your life? Are you the same person you were when you came and confessed your faith in me? And you just changed from being a non-member of a church to a member of the church, but you're still the same kind of person? You still have the same bad temper? You're still hard to get along with? You're still critical of people around you? You still waste your money? What is your life like? That's what he's looking for in you. And when the judgment time comes, he's going to be looking straight at you to say, what have you done? He wants to know, not only is our life transformed, he wants us to know that we've led other people to know who God is. So he'll be looking to say to you, can you see any way in which your life has caused people to come and become followers of me? Who are the disciples you've made and encouraged? He wants you to be able to look back at your life and see the people you've told about him. He wants you to look back and see the people who are new believers that you went along beside of them and encouraged them and supported them and spent time with them, helping them learn how to be able to take the steps of obedience to God. That's what he's going to be looking for. And I'll tell you this secret, you won't know all the people whose lives you've touched if you've been faithful to him. For some of us, he will be able to say, you don't know the whole story of your life. Remember that person you prayed for on the job one time? Because of your prayer, they came to know me and I want to tell you this great result of what's happened. Remember the time you taught Sunday school and those little kids came and you loved them and you prayed for them? When they grew up, they never forgot you and they started in church and their lives were changed. Those glorious things that we don't even know about will happen to us if we're faithful in the kingdom of God. But he expects some profit from us, some benefit from our lives on this earth because he's invested in us. In this story, God is represented as someone who brings us to himself and says, I have an assignment for you. And that's whenever you come and say, I give my life to Jesus Christ. At that moment, he says, I have a purpose for you and an assignment for you. You live this out. Your job is to discover what your assignment is. Your job is to prepare yourself and do it. And there will be at some time a point of accountability. You see, you have a choice to make with your life. Not only a choice just to come and say, I give my life to Christ, but a choice to say, I intend to live my life obedient to God regardless of what he asks me to do. This group, faith group, are doing something that's a great example for us. I'm going to do what I think God wants me to do even though everyone in the world thinks I'm stupid. I'm going to do what God has asked me to do even though I can't see the outcome of it. What a powerful example this is for us. That's what God expects of each one of us. Every day to say, Lord, I start this day to do what you want me to do. If there's anything you want me to do, put that in my mind, and I'll promise you this, I will try my best to do it. If there's anybody you want me to pray for, put that name in my mind, and I will promise you that I will stop right then and pray for that person. That's what he's asking of all of us. God has brought every human being into the world with this purpose. Now all those people that pay no attention to God, they're going to hold, be accountable for that. All those people who have simply joined the church and they're never doing anything about it, their life is the same one day after the other, they never try to make disciples, never take a job, never have a responsibility, they will be accountable for that. Because God has given every single person a responsibility. The responsibility is something you can do if you would, and he gives you the ability and the talent to do it. That's what this story is about. Notice in this story that all three of these people had a choice to make. They made their own choice. The Bible doesn't say that the man who didn't do his job right couldn't help it because he was determined before he was born to be that way. No excuse for this. The only excuse is you say, I do not want to. And so the judgment day came. The man who had five talents gained five more, the guy with two, he gained two more. And the master said the same thing to both of them. Well done, my good and faithful servant. You see, if you do what God has asked you to do the best you know how, that's all he asks of you. You may look around and say, well, I'm not as talented as some people, I don't have opportunities others have. It doesn't matter to God about that. Have you done what he's asked you to do with the best of your ability consistently? And if you have, he says, I'm so proud of you, you good and you faithful servant. You know what's weird about working for God? It's not like going to work for a company where you work 40 years, 50 years. They bring you in, give you a gold watch and say, you've been really a good worker. Go home and retire and sit down and wait till the end of your life. You know what he said to the guy that had five? Give him more. Whenever you've worked for God, you don't go into retirement. If you've been faithful to him, he gives you a little more to do and a little more to do and a little more to do. You know why that's true? Because the work that we do for God invigorates us, it excites us, it thrills us. And to have more is like the master says, I trust you. It's kind of like athletics. You know, you work on a team and you start out in your third string fullback and you work real hard and you give it everything you've got and the coach says, I'm going to move you up to second string and you work hard and you try your very best and the coach comes and says, you've done a great job, you've worked really hard, I'm getting you off the team. Well, you'd be heartbroken. Instead, he says, no, I'm going to put you in there and you come to the big game and everything's on the line and he turns to you and you say, you've worked hard, you've given it everything you've got, you've worked really hard, everything, so I'm going to set you down and you can watch this last part of the game. No, you come in and you say, I want the ball, I want to play, I want to give everything. Why? Because you love the game. Why do you want to do more for God? Because you love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. So the guy that worked hard and he went to five to the ten, the master said, give him some more, he's earned it. That's how different it is sometimes in church. I've done my part, you know, I've put my time in. That's the guy you want off the team. You don't want somebody like that playing for you. He's going to give up, he's going to quit. I read a story in the paper, this Mr. McElroy, he was a golfer and he got started playing and hit a toothache and he quit. Oh, I mean, the news media was just enraged by him. He quit in the middle of a golf tournament? He said when he started this last one, I'm never going to quit again, I've learned my lesson. You don't quit if you're really an athlete and if you're a follower of God, you do not quit. If you love him with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, you don't quit. That's why when Jesus tells this story, he said to the man even with the tooth, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. What's the joy of the master? To see the success of the kingdom. What's the joy of a football player, basketball player, to see the victory that comes? You get to participate with your coach in the victory. You all get to cut down the net when the championship's won. And someone that doesn't have a passion to see Jesus Christ become the Lord of all has missed everything about the kingdom. That's what this story's about. Did you really buy into the fact that your master and your Lord wanted you to do this job and you did it with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind? Then you are excited that the kingdom of God is growing, that new people are coming to know Christ, that new believers are growing in Christ. That thrills you. It's not like you're standing there watching a crowd out there. I saw the other day in some place that a soccer team had done badly and the fans were fighting with the players that were their home team, mad at them. See, it's the stands, people in the stands that are watching that boo the players. Seldom that the players boo each other because they're giving it their all. They may boo a guy that's on their team when he's not doing his part, but a lot of the criticism that comes are from people who are watching, and they wish you would do better. They wish the preacher was better. They wish the singer was better. They wish the Sunday school teacher was better. They wish the people in the church was better. Those are people that are not playing the game. Jesus chose in this last man is that kind of person. He said, I thought you were a guy who's really mean, tough, hard to get along with, so I didn't take a chance. I buried your money, and here's your money back. He thought he was doing him a favor. See what God wanted was a prophet. A lot of people decide on their own how to serve God. I find a lot of funerals where people talk about the deceased, and they're going to heaven. Boy, the reasons they give is, well, he never said a bad word about anybody, which is a lie, you know, right off the bat. He'd give you the shirt off his back. I never can tell you how many funerals I've done where the poor person that died didn't have any shirts left because he gave the shirt off his back to everybody he saw. Or, you know, he was a good father, or he was a good brother, or he was a good child, or good whatever. By whose standards? By whose standards is this good? Mine. I consider him good because of the things I saw him do. I'll tell you, at the judgment day, it doesn't matter what your opinion is. It's only God's that counts. This man looked at me and said, I don't care what you told me to do with my life. I'm going to do what I want to do with it. I know you called me and you gave me this gift and responsibility to live in obedience to you, but I decided that wasn't what I wanted to do. I did the best I could under my standards, and that ought to be enough for you, God. Now, what happens in this story is the man who did that, the scripture describes him as being thrown out the door, and the description of where he went is the description in the Bible for hell. Now, that's hard. Hell. What Jesus was saying is, if you come into this world and you ignore me as the Lord and ruler of the universe, there's no place in heaven for you. If you take all the resources that I've given you, your personality, your character, your nature, your money, and you use them the way you want to and you ignore my kingdom, there's no place in heaven for you. If you live your life, this thinking, how can I save myself, how can I protect myself instead of what does God want from me, there's no place in heaven for you. And Jesus told us that there'd be many people to judgment would say, well, wait a minute, you said I need to go to hell, but I taught Sunday school for you. I did miracles in your name. I did wonderful things for your kingdom. But you see, there's some people that do that so they can get to heaven. They don't intend to serve God. They intend to get to heaven. There's a difference between people that are trying to con God and people that are trying to serve God. And you and I may not know that difference, but I will promise you, God does. So you have to ask yourself, even if you teach Bible school or even if you teach Sunday school or whatever you do, why am I doing this? Am I doing it so that I might look good to others? Am I doing it so that I might go to heaven? Or am I really doing this because God has said to me, this is what I want for you. Receiving Jesus Christ as the Lord means that you live in obedience to him. And the judgment day came and the man who thought he did best for God in his own opinion was told there's no place in heaven for you. You can only make it if you live in obedience to me as your Lord. It is a matter of faith, you see, trust in God. Not trust in yourself, but trust in God. And so Jesus tells us in this story about our lives, what we have to do and how we have to be careful because the day of the Master's return is certain and the judgment will occur. Would you bow your heads, please, for just a moment? So I ask you to evaluate yourself. Can you ever point to a time in your life when you said to God, I give my life to you? When you did that, have you found yourself living for the kingdom of God or is it for yourself? What can you point to in your own life that shows the transformation of your character? What can you show in your life that shows that you put first what God wants for you and that you're making disciples? Even if it's just praying for someone to come to know Christ, that's a part of it. What are you doing that would cause someone else to enter the kingdom of heaven? You have zero on those, my friend, you're in desperate trouble. I don't care how good you are, how many times you've joined the church. I don't care about all those things. If you can't point to those, you need to go back to God and say, I want to make sure that my life is devoted to you. The moment we're going to sing an invitation hymn, it's an opportunity for you to answer God. If he's told you today that something's wrong with your life, he's wanting you to say, okay, I admit that and today I'm going to change that. If he's told you that you never have really committed yourself to him, he wants you to say, I understand that now. And today I'm ready to say, Lord, take my life. He's told you that this is a church you ought to be a part of. Then you need to say, okay, God, it doesn't matter if you don't like me, if you don't like Denise, if you don't like the building, if God's told you, that's what you do. For he alone is our master. So Lord Jesus, speak to us with clarity and with power and give us a spirit of submission to you that in this moment, our master will speak and each of us as his slaves will say, yes, Lord, your will be done. Amen. Would you stand please? You sing this invitation hymn, there's some kind of commitment you need to make to God. Would you like to come and simply share that with me or you share it with her? Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. T'was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed. Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. T'was grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home. Debbie, when I looked at you, all I could think of was Denise. That's all I could think of. I just... Worse than that one over there? Yeah. Brad comes today and says that he, just like many of us, is struggling each and every day. He doesn't believe that he's doing exactly what the Lord wants him to do, and he wanted the prayers of fellow believers here in the church, so we prayed for that, and I know you'll continue to pray for Brad and what he needs to do and for Doyle's memory. Thank you. Well, we believe in the mighty power of God. Father, I know Brad's told me before that he has a little bit of trouble with his temper, so I want to ask that you teach him self-control. Give him control over his mouth and his mind, so that he'll be able to say and do the things that are consistent with the profession of trust in you that he's made. We do thank you that you guide us. We thank you today that you speak to us. We trust you. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. We're going to close with the first verse of In Christ Alone, number 506. In Christ alone my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song This cornerstone, this solid ground Firm through the fiercest drought and storm What heights of love, what depths of peace When fears are sealed, when strivings cease My comforter, my all in all Here in the love of Christ I stand Could I ask you to stay, if you would, to go out on the vestibule and just make yourself available to people who want to come and talk to you about what you're doing. Maybe somebody has some ideas. Maybe you can stand there and people can share anything they've found with you.