Treasure, Talent, Life

Matthew 25:14-30. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A14-30&version=NIV
Some translations use the term “talents” to refer to what was left with these people mentioned in this parable, while others use gold or money. I discovered as I was reading this in a hard copy of the New International Version published in 1984, that the term “talents” is used, and the title of the section is “The Parable of the Talents”. Then I looked the same passage up on biblegateway.com, also under the category of New International Version, (which I must assume is a later, revised version of the NIV), and the term “bags of gold” is used instead of “talents”, and the section is titled “The Parable of the Bags of Gold”. The word “talent” as it was originally used is a measure of money, rather than the way the word is now commonly used to refer to some ability a person possesses, as “she has a great singing talent”, etc. In today’s economy, a “talent” would be worth about $1,400,116, so, even though the third servant in this parable was only given one fifth as much as the first servant, he was still entrusted with a substantial amount of money. To think that the third servant was treated unfairly would be like saying a man who won 10 million dollars in the lottery needs to be jealous of Bill Gates, because Mr. Gates has so much more.
Jesus uses money to represent an important point, but it is much more than a commentary on how we use money. It is about the condition of our heart/soul. In our modern vernacular, we tend to differentiate between heart, mind and soul as three separate things because we think more in terms of biological components, or body parts. Obviously, from a purely biological perspective, your brain (mind) and your heart (cardiovascular muscle) are two separate things. We speak of the heart as the seat of our emotions, and the brain as the seat of our reason and intellect, but that is all nonsense. Many deny the existence of the soul, but from the Biblical perspective, all this dichotomy and trichotomy is unnecessary. The human being is thought of in a more holistic sense, the totality of who you are. In essence, you are a “living soul”. Genesis 2:7: “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (soul).”
Like any parable, analogy or metaphor, it is used to prove a point by comparing one thing to another. No parable, analogy or metaphor is perfect, and can always be picked apart by any critic who would rather dissect the specific elements than get to the matter of the truth conveyed. This became apparent to me one day as I was thinking about Jesus being our Good Shepherd. A shepherd keeps sheep to either fleece them or kill them and eat them. They are not pets. But that is not the point. You can overanalyze any parable and find fault. The point is that the shepherd leads the vulnerable sheep and takes care of them.
Notice first, the money did not belong to the servants. It says the man “entrusted” his wealth to the servants, and they are referred to as servants, meaning they were put in charge of managing his money, not possessing the money to be used for their own pleasure. As lost human beings, we tend to be possessive. We say, “This is my money, these are my things.” The truth of the matter is that none of it ultimately belongs to any of us. It all belongs to God. This heart (soul) condition of possessiveness gets us into trouble fast. What is the first thing we want to do with anything we consider to be our own? We want to protect and defend it. We buy insurance on everything from our toothbrushes to our lives. The attitude is “If it belongs to me no one else has the right to use it or have it unless I give it to them, or loan it to them.”
Jesus obviously wants us to think of God as the Master in this parable, otherwise, as we consider God the real owner of all things, the parable makes no sense, because an earthly businessman is not the real owner. Jesus uses this analogy of an owner entrusting his money and possessions to others many times in different parables. There is really no point in expanding on the actions of the first two servants. They did what they were supposed to do. The lesson is regarding the actions of the third man. We tend to be more like him.
Imagine with me for a moment that you are the owner of a chain of businesses. You establish a strict set of procedures about how these stores are to be run. Standard Operational Procedures (SOP’s since we love acronyms) as they are referred to in today’s business world. You hire managers to run the individual stores, and train them in the SOPs you have established. You make your expectations known to them clearly. They are your representative to your customers. You agree to pay them a certain salary or wage. They agree in writing to your terms and take the jobs.
Now imagine that one day you find out that one of your managers has decided to no longer follow your instructions. He has decided that he is smarter than you and has a better way of doing things. He has also decided that the salary you are paying him (which he agreed to), is insufficient, and that he deserves more. He starts doctoring the books and stealing some of your profit. What would your reaction be? You would probably fire him immediately and take him to court for embezzlement.
Why would anyone assume that God, our Creator, the owner of everything, would act any differently towards us finite beings that He has created if we deliberately mismanage what is His, and attempt to steal from Him? That is the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and it has continued to be the sin of mankind ever since then. This parable, and those like it, are essentially telling the story of Genesis 3 all over again. We think we are smarter than God. Bad theologians exhibit this behavior when they take the plain truth of God’s Word and twist it to suit their own preconceived ideas and biases. The truth of God’s Word is not hard to understand, but it does confront our sin, and we do not like that, so instead of just obeying, we figure out ways in our own minds to twist the meaning and justify our sin. The problem with a lot of so called “theology” now days is that it starts with man’s reasoning as the standard, and then tries to make God’s Word fit into it. We should never try to make God’s Word fit into our reasoning. We must subject our reasoning to God’s Word. If your thoughts and reasoning do not line up with what God’s Word says, or if current scientific or ideological reasoning does not line up with what God’s Word says, guess what? That does not mean that God’s Word is in error. It means that man’s reasoning and understanding is in error.
Let’s look at the parable: One man is given five, one man is given two, and one is given one. This has nothing to do with fairness, and we need to learn to stop thinking that way. It seems like one of the first things children learn to say, after “mommy and daddy” is “That’s not fair!” Much of the clamor we hear from today’s youth (and even middle-age, and elders for that matter) is the same thing. News flash: Life is not fair. It never has been, and never will be. Idealistically, we would like for it to be, but that is not reality. We live in reality not, our made-up version of how we think it should be. The question should never be, “What does someone else have?”, but rather “What do I have?” or better, “What have I been given.” What you have is what you work with, not what someone else has.
John 3:27: “A person can receive only what is given them from heaven.”
People tend to not think realistically. Think for a moment. What have you been given? What do you have? Think about all the things that make you, you, over which you had no control. You were given life. You did not choose to be born. (That is a rather silly thought anyway. How could someone who did not previously exist, choose to exist?) The first thing we must come to terms with, if we think realistically, is that our very existence is the product of Someone (Creator) or something (process) causing our existence. The simple answer is that your parents mated, but that does not really answer the question, because then you have to ask, where they came from, and go all the way back to some point in time when some first pair of humans mated. It must stop somewhere. You were either created, or you were the product of some mindless chance, which makes no sense.
Wrong thinking begins with the wrong understanding or belief about God. Notice the wrong thinking of the third man: “‘I knew that you are a hard man”. How many times have you heard or read someone say “If God is loving and good, then why (fill in the blank)?” That is because people do not have a Biblical understanding of God or creation. They think that because things are bad, then God is bad. That is faulty logic. That is like thinking the business owner in my illustration is at fault if the business goes bad because the manager he put in charge ruined his business. God has given us a good planet to manage and we have screwed it up. That does not mean that God is bad, or what He has given us is bad. To say that because bad things happen, that either God is bad, or God does not exist is faulty logic. Bad things happen because bad people do bad things.
I remember a conversation I had with one of my co-workers several years ago. He said something like, “If God is good and all powerful, why does He allow little boys to be molested by priests?” My response to him went something like this: “Think about the nature of our reality. Sin is sin. Priests molesting boys is sin. You, looking lustfully at a woman who is not your wife is sin. If God stepped into our reality and intervened in judgement every time someone sinned, you would have been dead a long time ago, and so would I. You are not angry about God for not judging sin, which He does in His own time, you are angry because you are not being given the satisfaction of witnessing God’s judgement of someone you deem worthy of judgement. That does not mean that God will not judge the priest in question in His own time. If God does not exist, then there is no basis for morality except our own private opinions. If your morality dictates that priests who molest should be judged, and the priest’s morality tells him it is perfectly fine to molest boys, who is to say who’s morality is correct, if all it is based on is our subjective opinions?”
If we do not base our understanding of reality, morals, reasons and actions on anything other than our own subjective opinions, then anything goes. We digress into chaos. And this generation appears to be headed in that direction.
“harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.” This makes God sound like a hateful slave master. Think of the American Slaves. They were made to pick cotton, tobacco, etc., to no benefit of their own, only to make the slave master wealthy. Again, wrong and illogical thinking about God. God is not like this.
“So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.” Proper fear of God prompts us to obey Him, not do the opposite of what He requires. That makes no sense.
Improper fear, the fear of man, which the Scripture says is a “snare”, (Proverbs 29:25) causes us to try to protect ourselves. The third servant had a wrong belief about God, so he tried to protect himself by burying the Master’s gold in the ground. The gold did not benefit him or his Master. There are many people who simply hoard money out of fear instead of using it to benefit anyone. 10 million dollars squirreled away in a bank vault is of no value to anyone. It is not doing anything. It is useless. Money, in and of itself, has no value. It is just paper and metal, or numbers on a computer somewhere. The value of money is what it represents, and what is done with it. There are a lot of wealthy people who will not fair well in God’s judgement because they have needlessly hoarded wealth that could have been used for much good:
Ecclesiastes chapter 5:
10 Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless. 11 As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owners except to feast their eyes on them? 13 I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners, 14 or wealth lost through some misfortune, so that when they have children there is nothing left for them to inherit. 15 Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb, and as everyone comes, so they depart. They take nothing from their toil that they can carry in their hands. 16 This too is a grievous evil:
James chapter 5:
1 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
Look at the Master’s response to the third servant:
‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.”
Notice, no mercy is shown to the servant. He is called wicked, and lazy, not unfortunate and misinformed. First, the servant stated what he (wrongly) believed about the master’s character: “I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed,” and then, to make matters worse, he did not even act consistently with what he stated he believed: “So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground.” To paraphrase, “I knew you place unreasonable expectations on us, so instead of doing what I should have done to please you based on those expectations, I did nothing.” He thought he was playing it safe. A lot of people are “playing it safe” all the way to the gates of hell! There is no real playing it safe in this world. There is no neutral, safe space. The Bible says you are either for Him, or you are against Him. There are no other options.
“So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.”
So you think you know what God is like? Do you act inconsistently with that belief? That doesn’t even make sense. Lots of people say they believe one thing, and then they do not base their lives and actions on what they say they believe. It is just empty words, like politicians spouting off meaningless rhetoric they think voters want to hear on the campaign trail, with no intention of doing any of what they say they are going to do in order to get elected.
“‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
There is a Biblical principle that a lot of people don’t get. We tend to think in terms of the Robin Hood mentality: rob from the rich and give to the poor. Sounds reasonable in our humanistic way of thinking. If some people have too much and others do not have enough, simply take from the ones who have too much and give to those who do not have enough. That is the basis for a lot of government taxation and welfare plans. There is a problem with this approach however: It is not Biblical, and it does not work. In God’s economy, the basis for your increase is what you do with what you have. It does not matter if you have 5 talents or 1. Comparing the 5 to the 1 does not even factor into the equation. If you use what you have in a good and productive way, God increases it. That is the whole point to the accounts of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fish. The boy gave the little he had for the good of the multitude instead of just eating it himself, and God increased in drastically.
The reason that a lot of people are poor is because they waste what little they have, repeatedly. Watching people who struggle financially constantly going into the convenience stores to purchase lottery tickets is a prime example of this. The ones who do win occasionally are just the bait that just keeps the hopeful returning again and again to buy the tickets. The odds against you actually winning the lottery are so astronomically high that buying the tickets is a waste of money that could be put to much better uses.
Our government’s approach to a lot of economic problems is to simply continue to increase taxes and throw piles of (theoretical) money at problems. (In actuality, the money does not even exist. It is just made up numbers that don’t mean anything. There’s nothing to back the numbers up. It is all a shell game, and psychological manipulation of the masses. It makes no difference to say the national deficit is 200 trillion or 500 trillion. In reality, it does not exist.) Time and time again, our history proves that this does not solve problems, but we continue to do it over and over. Because of many of the welfare programs that were started in the mid 1900’s, our country has proliferated a perpetual welfare state for many people with no end in sight.
The Scripture does instruct us to be kind and charitable to the poor. If we have the means, we should help the poor when we have opportunity to do so. However, the problem is often not with those who are charitable to the poor, but the behavior of the poor themselves. God does not bless and increase those who are reckless and irresponsible with the resources He has provided for them.
The gist of the matter is this:

1. It is each person’s responsibility to find out the truth about God, who He is, what He is like, and what He expects of us. We all have a responsibility as creatures made in the image of God to think and believe rightly about Him, and base our actions and behavior on what He says in His Word. We are not free to just think and believe whatever we want based on our ungrounded or unsubstantiated opinions. The third man in the parable had “bad theology”. His belief about the master (God) was just plain wrong, and to top it off, he did not even base his actions on the what he said he believed about the master.
2. The truth of God can ONLY be found in the Word of God. He has orchestrated the process of the production of the Bible throughout the course of history to give us HIS Word. We are without excuse if we neglect it. I never cease to be amazed by the people who argue so vehemently against the Bible when they have never even taken the time to seriously study it and understand what it says.
3. Comparing ourselves with others is always a recipe for failure. We do not judge ourselves based on comparing ourselves to others. There is no end to this. Many people are better off than you, many people are worse off than you. Many people have much better character than you, many people have much worse character than you. We obey God and what He says. He is the authority, not our opinions. We thank Him for what He has provided us, how He has made us, and for life itself. When each person stands before God for judgement, nothing any other person ever said or did will factor into our own judgement. The only other person who will factor into our judgement or pardon is the person of Jesus Christ, the God-Man who bore our sins. It is only through Him that our sins can be forgiven, and removed.

“And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Judgement will be severe and eternal for all who choose to neglect so a great a salvation. The third man in the parable will have a lot of company, but it will not be a happy time. It will be a time of endless misery for all. We all choose for ourselves and have no one else to blame.