A life of pleasure is a goal for many in our culture. Unfortunately, while many pursue this dream, its elusiveness proves that those who pursue pleasure always succumb to pain. Lives structured to seek personal pleasure are lives desperate to make the pleasure last as long as possible. When happiness is the goal, dissatisfaction is the product. That search for pleasure begins with the faulty presupposition that personal gratification is a valid goal. From that basis one determines what is pleasing and what is not by the immediate consequences, by the satisfaction we derive from any given experience. We find pleasure in the company of friends, a good meal and fine wine, or a rewarding job. Our pleasure is heightened when we achieve a sense of accomplishment, in discovering the love of another, or in raising children. While none of those are evil activities, when they are the supreme good of life, we sell ourselves far too short. The difficulty we face is that pleasure is a gift from God and it is to be a pointer to God, but when God is removed from the equation and pleasure is our goal we soon become bored. The affluence of the West encourages this self-indulgence rather than self-discipline which sees something greater than personal enjoyment as the final product in life. When Neil Postman wrote about American television in 1985, he aptly titled his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. When we pursue pleasure without reference to God we are doing that very thing. Far too often while we may search for pleasure within our own confines, all that results is affliction. When we determine what gives us pleasure we never have the opportunity to discover anything larger than ourselves. What we dream is always so limited. The 19th Century playwright Oscar Wilde was known for his pursuit of pleasure to the exclusion of God’s commandments. Before his death he saw the emptiness of his life. It was then he said: "The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease ... Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in search of new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the housetop. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace." Real pleasure is found in the pleasure of God. Our passage this morning helps us ask the tough question: “How am I to respond to the life God has given me?” Here we see another parable told by Jesus as He describes what life between the Resurrection and the Return is to be lived. These parables are a series of warnings to live lives prepared for the return of our Lord so that we can give a good account of our lives. 14. "Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. 15. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. 16. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. 17. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. 18. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. 19. "After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. 20. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. `Master,' he said, `you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.' 21. "His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!' 22. "The man with the two talents also came. `Master,' he said, `you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.' 23. "His master replied, `Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!' 24. "Then the man who had received the one talent came. `Master,' he said, `I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.' 26. "His master replied, `You wicked, lazy servant! 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. 28. "`Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. 29. 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. 30. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' OUR PLEASURE IS FOUND IN GOD’S TRUST God trusts us with His creation. In this parable about the end of the age, Jesus likens the time between the two advents as similar to a Master who goes on a trip. Notice the words "entrusted his property to them." Let me ask you. Whose property was it? It was the master’s. What did he do? He passed it on to his servants. This is a reminder of what David says in Psalm 24: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” God’s ownership of creation means that we are stewards, we are caretakers of what God has for us. The opening chapters of Genesis tell us this responsibility was first given to Adam. The gift of creation, the responsibility of stewardship, the trust God has given is still with us. The parable begins with grace. This parable, as it is with our lives, begins with God giving to us. We the servants, undeservingly receive something because of the generosity of the master. We can never understand personal fulfillment apart from God giving to us that which we do not deserve. God’s trust is tremendous. In our parable what the Master gives is called a “talent.” Our modern English uses “talent” for skills and mental powers God has entrust to us; but here talanton was a unit of exchange based on a weight, between fifty and eighty pounds, depending on the country. When used of money, it was considered the largest conceivable amount. The NIV footnotes it as more than a thousand dollars, but it far exceeded that amount. The value varied, depending on whether the weight measured gold, copper or silver. But often a talent was thought to equal about 6,000 denarii, which would take the average person some twenty years to earn. Perhaps the best way to translate the talent is as a “ton of money.” We could think of a talent equaling a million dollars. That would give us some sense of the generosity of the Master Even though the amounts of money are given based on the ability of each person (verse 15) we must understand that even the person who got just one talent received far more than he could ever imagine. God’s trust given to us is based not on who we are, but comes out of His generosity. We see here that pleasure comes not from within ourselves, but outside of ourselves. Pleasure which we imagine is nothing but fantasy. And fantasy is, at heart, idolatry. Fantasy only creates a scenario in which the god we construct is always desirous to be worshipped. We always win in our own fantasies. When we construct pleasures based out of our own desires, we are constructing idols. OUR PLEASURE IS FOUND IN GOD’S WORK God’s work is to be our life. Notice the response of the servants. The first one goes out immediately. There is nothing stopping him. He’s given a tremendous responsibility by the master, a wonderful gift to watch over while the master is gone and he wastes no time. He puts his money to work and in time his investment is doubled. The second servant does the same, also doubling what the Master has given him. But the third servant does something different. Remember, just because he has only one talent, does not mean he has one meager coin, but has at his disposal more money than he’d ever see in his lifetime. With only one talent, he’s already a millionaire. But he doesn’t immediately go out and put the money to work; he gets a mayonnaise jar and digs a hole in the back yard and buries the money. At first that sounds odd, but in a time and place in the world where banking systems were far from trustworthy, where anything like a stock market would make the events of the last few weeks look like only good news, people often buried their money as the safest way to protect their investment. But this man is a fool. What is the difference between him and the others praised by the Master? The first two found immense pleasure in the work the Master gave them. There was something they understood about the Master and the money that gave them the freedom to use it so that when the Master returns, there will be all the more money afterwards. God’s work produces pleasure. The English does not catch the excitement of the five and two talent servants. In verse 20 when the Master returns the servants put the emphasis on what they have done with the money he gave them, calling the Master to look and see! What we do with the gracious gift of our work shows what we think of the Lord. That is, it shows whether we believe or not that He has given us something good. We sometimes think of our work as just a job. Jesus thinks of our work as a million-dollar opportunity to show our high or low view of Him. It is far too easy to think of our lives as nothing more than a series of unrelated events with no connection to a distant God. What I have is not my own, what I have has been given to me by my Master. He entrusts us with His world. This truth shatters the myth of our culture and our church that I a law to myself, that I am autonomous. So often I am the one who answers the question of how I spend my time, how I spend money, use my body and mind. It tells me I am not my own. We will be held accountable. OUR PLEASURE IS FOUND IN GOD’S PLEASURE God’s pleasure is seen in our use of the work God entrusts to us The response to the five and two talent servants is great commendation, to the other, horrible condemnation. The praise is given to the two servants: ”Well done!” This mark of approval shows the Master’s pleasure is given to those who find their pleasure in pleasing him. “Good and faithful.” Here we hear the Master’s pleasure expressed. Here we know what God desires of us: to be a faithful steward. That old Marine slogan should be tattooed across our chests - Semper Fi - always faithful. But in our day people walk away from promises made, out of marriages, commitments. Do you know what faithfulness is? Do you keep your word? If your life is marked by infidelity, whether that fidelity be in marriage, the way you treat your vocation, your children, then you will never hear the Master say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Faith in Christ is evidenced by faithfulness. Faithfulness is the mark that faith is real. It is what James means by showing your faith by your works. It is a faith that is working. Recognizing that faithfulness in what God has given you to do, in your home, in your vocation, in church, is critical to finding the pleasure God desires for us. It is when we see all life is from God’s hand that we can find the pleasure in doing what He has commanded us to do. I am amazed by the statement in verse 21: “You have been faithful with a few things.” The master gave him millions of dollars and he doubled that investment - that is a few! But that just sets the stage for what is to come. What is now to come is far greater than just some of his spare change. The life God has given us today - all that God has given us is the just a taste of what lies before us in eternity. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians in chapter 1 is something you and I need to pray for one another every day, that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” The benefit of finding your pleasure in God is summed up in the final invitation: “Come and share your master’s happiness.” There are plenty of good times God gives us in this life, but even those are just small morsels of the good that is to come for those that are His. C.S. Lewis has said: "The settled happiness and security which we all desire God withholds from us by the very nature of the world; but joy, pleasure and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and pose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bath or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home." God’s displeasure is seen in our disuse of the work God entrusts to us. There is an unfortunate alternative taken by far too many who profess faith in Christ, but quickly hide that faith far from others. This is seen by the one talent servant who rejects the Master’s gift. Notice his response as he gives his account to the master as to why he buried the gift. “You are a hard man.” When he calls the Master hard, the word, sclhros becomes sclerosis in English, where we use it for the medical condition of arteriosclerosis - hardening of the arteries. The word is used of a person who is cruel, merciless, harsh. “...harvesting where you do not sow, gathering where you do not scatter seed.” This servant thinks the Master is hard because it was the Master’s habit of getting far more than one should expect. He is too demanding, too exacting. But his excuse condemns him - if he knew his master was hard man, he knew that he expected something more out of him. The hole he dug to hide his talent of money was his own grave. But he tries to blame his own inactivity on his Master - “I did nothing because of you." The foolish virgins failed from thinking their part too easy; the wicked servant fails from thinking his too hard. “I was afraid.” This servant could not see the pleasure the Master offered him. He could not bring himself to act, so he was paralyzed, immobilized with fear. He thought being a spectator was all that he should do, never venture out, never trust that the Master would be pleased just in the servant’s pleasure of him. The fear of this slave betrays his misguided and deadly notions of the master. What we see here is a use of good theology to a very bad end. He almost sounds like a Calvinist - stressing the sovereignty of the Master, His all powerful hand produces nothing but fear. The servant seems to adopt a view of sovereignty that allows for the neglect of human responsibility. The servant is justifying his puzzling non-activity with a theologically sophisticated argument. But his argument falls to pieces as quickly as he makes it. His pitiful view of sovereignty is one wholly absent of compassion and love. The servant fears the master as an ogre, totally ignoring that the Master began with the first move of giving each servant more money then they’d ever imagine. Then with the money from the Master they increased their share so that the Master would reward them even more for only taking the pleasure of the gift he gave in the first place. How easy is it for you and me to be like the one talent servant? We will justify our own laziness by convoluted theological statements which explain why we refuse to enjoy the gracious life God has given us. We will blind ourselves to the source of real pleasure found in constructing our life to please and serve God in whatever place He has for us. We will hid in terror, afraid that He is malevolent, all the while saying we believe He is gracious and loving. In one of his short stories, Edgar Allen Poe tells of a rural farm family for whom the big event of the year was the arrival of the mail order catalog. Every year they would order from its pages one gift for the entire family. This particular year, they ordered a collapsible telescope, and after several long months, the package finally came. Quickly, they unwrapped it, set it up in front of a window, and trained the lens toward a distant building . . ., and what they saw horrified them. There before their telescopic lens was a hideous, grotesque monster. Unanimously, they decided it must be doomsday, so they quickly locked the doors and fastened the windows and pulled down the shades, then huddled together waiting for the end. After a long while, the smallest boy in the family noticed that what they saw through the telescopic lens was not a hideous monster on a distant building at all, it was simply a praying mantis on the screen right outside the window. Here was reality magnified out of all proportion. They saw, but because they had only a spectator’s grasp of what they were viewing, their perspective was warped and they drew the wrong conclusions. What are your conclusions about God today? Despite hearing that His love for you is so great that He would send His one and only Son to die for you on the Cross, do you refuse to trust Him with your life? Despite knowing that Christ took your sins and gives you His righteousness, do you still try to control your own life all the while you’ve buried your faith in a jar in the garden, thinking you can dig it up when the Master returns? What does that Master say when he returns to this servant? To those who received His gracious gift and were faithful as they believed the Master was good to them and increased their gift twofold, he invited them in to enjoy everlasting life. But to the servant who rejected the gift, the Master rejects that servant. The servant is wicked and lazy. The word ”lazy” comes from the verb which means to hesitate. It is like the one in James 1 who doubts even as he asks, not trusting that God is good; he is double minded, tossed about like a small boat in the waves. He is lazy; he’s buried his relationship in the ground. It is nothing more than life insurance. He thinks that he can claim some decision made ten years ago and buried that in the ground as sufficient for the Master to grant him acceptance. James said, "Faith without works is dead." (James 2:26). Where there is justification, there will be sanctification; thus, a person without sanctification is not justified. The proof of salvation is good works, and antinomianism, lawlessness, proves the falseness of a person. He who loves God will keep His commandments. He who is united with the vine of Christ will produce fruit, more fruit, and much fruit for the glory of God the Father. The fruitless branch will be cut off, gathered and burned. The servant is worthless. What could be worse than to be called worthless by God? The servant has shown himself to be useless. He had a chance to be a hero, but became a zero all because he refused to trust the goodness of the Master. And so, he was tossed out. Not just as a servant out of the household, but the parable takes on an apocalyptic climax - he was tossed into eternal torment. Our pleasure is found in faithfully using the gifts God gives us. If we really believed that everything we have is a gift from God to be used to honor God, I would have to get up here on Sunday morning and ask you to stop bothering Sue about teaching Sunday School. I would tell you that we have far too many wanting to be trained in EE, that you’ve got to stop bringing people to church on Sunday morning; we’ve run out of room. Stop giving; we don’t know what to do with it all. We’ve got to find more missionaries to support. If we really understood the proper motivation of service, we’d be so filled here, that we would be doing what God desires; you’d be flowing from here out into the culture and affecting that for Christ. But we beg and plead because we don’t really believe we are stewards of God. We constantly forget that one day we must stand before God. You and I will stand before our Master and those will be the two options; there will be judgment. We will receive the word of grace, or we will be wrathful because we have rejected that offer of grace. If that reality does not thrust us out, immediately, in to this world to invest this life He has given us then nothing will ever move us, except God’s Spirit, to hear this reality, today, while it is still day. Do you hear? Do you believe this? Then seize the day before it is too late. |
