Matthew 25:14-30

Other Readings – Zeph 1:7,12-18; Psalm 90; 1 Thess 5:1-11
 
 
Absolutely everything in the Christian life is a gift from God. The Christian life is never about us striving to achieve anything for ourselves apart from God. Instead it’s about us coming and receiving the gifts of God, and then putting these gifts to work in our lives.

Our parable for today begins with the master, who represents Christ, giving generous gifts to his servants. A Roman talent was worth six thousand denarii, or six thousand days pay for the average worker. So even the one talent fellow had a fair bit entrusted to him. It was the equivalent of about 16 years pay. This should remind us of how generously God gives to each one of us, and how the story of our lives always begins with God’s generous giving.

God gives us a whole variety of different gifts. Yet the greatest gift he gives us is always the gift of salvation, and the instruments through which his salvation comes to us such as Baptism and God’s word. The most natural way to understand the parable of the talents is that it is a referring first and foremost to all of those gifts that pertain to our faith and our salvation: the gift of Jesus as our Saviour, the gift of Baptism and adoption into God’s family, the gift of the Lord’s Supper, the gift of Absolution, the gift of God’s listening ear which hears our prayers, the gift of God’s Spirit, and so on. Then in addition we could also include the gifts and fruits of the Spirit, and all of the other resources and abilities that God gives us for use in this world. The Christian life is always about coming to God at his invitation to receive all these gifts from him, and then investing these gifts in our lives. So our text for today is a call for us to do that, to faithfully receive and use the gifts of God.

This text is a good opportunity for us to deal with a very common misunderstanding about the Christian faith. This misunderstanding is particularly common amongst Protestants, and sad to say, amongst Lutherans. And that is that because we are saved by faith alone, we don’t actually have to do anything in order to be Christians. In one sense that’s right. It is true that we are saved by God’s grace and forgiveness and not by our own good works. But in another sense it is devilishly wrong. For the faith which saves us is not a dead thing which does nothing. Instead it is a living and active thing which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, which rejoices in God’s gifts, and so willingly comes and receives them and puts them to use. And without these gifts no faith will remain alive for long.

Now there is such a thing as a dead faith. It’s spoken about in Scripture, and it’s spoken about in the Confessions of the Lutheran Church. A dead faith knows all about God and his gifts – it just doesn’t care. A dead faith believes that God exists. It may even believe that Jesus died for the sins of the world and that forgiveness is available through him. It just doesn’t care to come to him in repentance to receive the gift of forgiveness, or to have anything else to do with him and the gifts he offers. Satan has a faith like that. He knows all about God and can recite the Bible backwards. Yet such a devilish faith saves no one. For the saving gifts of God are of no use if they are rejected or buried in the sand. Instead, if they are to be of value to us they need to be received and put to use in our lives.

One example of a dead faith at work is called cheap grace. Cheap grace involves using God’s grace as a cheap excuse to sin, instead of as the precious gift of God that should lead us to repentance. Cheap grace uses God’s grace as an excuse to continue on in unfaithfulness, instead of as an opportunity to make a fresh start each day in walking faithfully with our Lord. Cheap grace says, I’m forgiven, so therefore I can go and cheat on my tax return and be a scumbag in my business. Cheap grace says, I’m forgiven, therefore I don’t have to come to church, or read my Bible, or apply God’s word to myself. Cheap grace says, I’m forgiven, and therefore I can be rude and obnoxious and abusive to my spouse and my kids. Cheap grace says, I’m forgiven, and therefore I can cheat on my wife, or use my girlfriend as a concubine instead of marrying her. Cheap grace says, it’s OK for me to be selfish, greedy, and bad tempered, to live to pursue money and the things of this world, and to use my gifts and abilities to serve myself rather than serving God or my neighbour. God’s grace excuses it all. Cheap grace is never the response of faith. It is the response of a dead faith which comes from the sinful nature, and which ultimately despises God. It is not the response of saving faith, the living and active gift of the Holy Spirit, which trusts that all that comes from God is good, and delights in him and all his gifts.

Now the fellow who buried his talent in the ground is an example of someone with a dead faith. He knew all about his master and his gifts. It’s just that he despised both the gift and the master. It’s clear that he didn’t really want the gift. He buried it in the ground, and couldn’t wait to give it back. And his words about his master, whinging about how harsh he was, show that he really despised him. So the gift that he was given was of no value to him, and ultimately he lost everything.

Yet before we point the finger at this fellow, or at anyone else, we need to realise that there is something dead in each one of us. The sinful nature that resides in each one of us is dead. It is dead to God, and dead to his will and his ways. And if we are honest we all have to confess that this sinful nature continually rears its ugly head in our lives, so that  none of us have been as faithful as we ought to be in receiving God’s gifts and putting them to use. We have all been guilty at times of burying his gifts in the sand.

So what’s the solution?

The first part of the solution involves recognising that unfaithfulness gets us nowhere. It just leads us to miss out on God’s blessings. And if we deliberately persist in unfaithfulness so that it gets the upper hand in our lives it will ultimately choke the life out of our faith so that we too lose everything. Instead Jesus invites us to live by the Spirit he has given us so that we put to death our sin in daily repentance, and then to come to him to receive his gifts instead.

The second part of the solution involves recognising how wonderful God’s gifts really are. The God who calls us to be faithful is not a harsh taskmaster, but a loving Saviour, who has given his life for us, and whose gifts to us are always good. When we recognise this so that we joyfully come to receive everything that God has to give us, then this results in a multiplication of God’s blessings in our lives, and in the lives of those around us.

The first thing that we should notice about the two faithful servants is that they had no complaints about their master. They were quite happy to receive his gifts, to put them to use, and then to reap the rewards. In the same way when we faithfully follow our Lord we discover that this is not a burdensome thing at all, but instead brings great reward.

The second thing we should notice is that when the talents were invested, they multiplied. There is no servant in the story who invests his talents but then fails to reap an increase. For the fact is that God’s gifts always produce fruit when they are put to good use. That’s God’s promise to us. He promises that his word will not return to him empty, and that when we hear it in faith we will be blessed. He promises that when his Spirit is living through the power of the gospel, this will produce peace and joy and other good gifts in our lives. He promises that when we pray he will hear and answer our prayers. He promises that our labours in the Lord are never in vain, so that when we work faithfully at the tasks he has given us, we can be assured of a good fruit. This doesn’t mean that life will always be easy, or that we won’t experience trouble or hardship. We will. Yet the blessings will also be there, and the spiritual blessings we receive in Christ will ultimately outweigh all hardships.

I know this is true in my own life. When I am diligent in my study of God’s word, I derive great comfort and strength and blessing from it. When I pray, my burden is always lightened, and my prayers are ultimately answered in the end. And I have seen this to be true in the lives of the people I have ministered to as well. It should be no surprise that the people I have seen growing most in my time in ministry are always people who have a regular place for God’s word in their lives, and then actively live out their faith in the Gospel.

In a similar way, this is true for the church as a whole. At the moment, many churches in Australia are facing a serious decline in numbers, and are doing a lot of soul searching about it. Yet while it is good for us to give some serious thought and attention to this issue, the ultimate answer as to what we should do about it is obvious. We are simply called to take the gifts that God has given us and to be faithful in using them. This means investing the Gospel in our own lives, and then faithfully confessing the good news to others. It means being diligent in prayer. It means baptising and teaching and learning God’s word, and applying what we hear to ourselves. It means repenting of our unfaithfulness, and then faithfully using the good gifts God has given us in the callings he has placed us into in life. God will take care of the rest.

And the final thing we should notice about the two faithful servants is that the greatest blessings are yet to come. When their Lord returned he said to them, “You’ve been faithful with small things, now it’s time to give you big things. Come and enjoy my happiness.” I other words, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” All the gifts that God gives us in this life are nothing in comparison with what he has in store for us when our Lord returns to take us home. The joy we receive from our faith and salvation now is only a small foretaste of what is still to come.

So, dear friends, let us not be foolish and bury God’s gifts in the ground. But instead let us grab hold of the Gospel, and all the gifts of God’s grace, so that they produce great rewards in our lives. Amen.