MATTHEW 25:14-30
AFTER I PREACHED ON the end of Matthew 24, one person came up to me after the service and asked, “What does it mean to be ready for Jesus’ return?” Then after I preached on Matthew 25:1-13—the Parable of the Ten Virgins—two people came up to me after the service, one after the other, with that same question. When I went to my Growth Group on that same Sunday night the question on everyone’s mind was, “What does it mean to be ready?” When I received some feedback from other Growth Group leaders, I heard that the same question was raised in the other groups.
One group member, John Higgins, said that readiness for the second coming of Christ looks like readiness for the first coming of Christ. That’s an excellent observation. I expected nothing less from John. The question of readiness is not only raised but also answered in full in the three parables found in Matthew 25.
In the Parable of the Ten Virgins, readiness looks like prepared waiting—not just waiting but prepared waiting. All ten virgins are waiting for the bridegroom, but only the five wise ones are prepared in their waiting. They have brought extra oil for their lamps. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, which we will explore in the next chapter, we are given another image of readiness. The image there is that of loving the least. The sheep demonstrate allegiance to Christ by loving the least even in some unlovely situations—sickness, imprisonment, and so on. Another picture of readiness is found in our current text. In the Parable of the Talents we will learn that readiness looks like faithful working. So we might say that readiness looks like hope (the Parable of the Virgins), love (the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats), and faith (the Parable of the Talents). In this tract our focus is on faith, more specifically on faithful working, or even more accurately a faithfulness that works.
J. C. Ryle, the nineteenth-century Bishop of Liverpool, summarizes today’s parable by comparing and contrasting it with the previous parable. I haven’t found a summary I agree with more than his. He writes:
The parable of the talents is very like that of the ten virgins. Both direct our minds to the same important event: the second coming of Jesus Christ. [I agree.] Both bring before us the same people: the members of the professing church of Christ. [I also agree.] The virgins and the servants are one and the same people—but the same people regarded from a different point, and viewed on different sides. The practical lesson of each parable is the main point of difference: vigilance is the keynote of the first parable, diligence that of the second. The story of the virgins calls on the church to watch; the story of the talents calls on the church to work. [I couldn't agree more.]
The Parable of the Talents focuses on a faithfulness that works. It calls on the Ecclesia to work. It calls on the Eccesia to be ready for Jesus’ return by working between his resurrection and return with the gifts we have been given.
The Start of the Story
Let’s get to work on this theme of work. Jesus’ story is told in three scenes. Let’s start with the two scenes found in verses 14-18.
[Scene One] For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.
[Scene Two] He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money.
Note four things in these five verses. First, Jesus makes a number of contextual connections. For example, he starts with the words, “For it will be like...” What is “it”? The answer is easily found in the preceding parable. “It” is “the kingdom of heaven” (v. 1 ). “The kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins” (v. 1), and the kingdom of heaven will also be like “a man going on a journey” (v. 14). That word “journey,” along with the phrase “Now after a long time” in verse 19, also connects to the context. We are reminded that Jesus is still on the Mount of Olives (24:3), giving what has come to be known as the Olivet Discourse. He is foretelling the future (the fall of Jerusalem and his second coming), and he is forth-telling about the present and future (what his disciples then and now should do in light of such events).
The second thing to note is the identity of the “man” of verse 14, also called the “master” nine times throughout the rest of the parable. This “master” is Jesus. I say that because it is obvious, especially in light of the identity of the bridegroom in the previous parable (Jesus) and the king in the next parable (Jesus), but also because the word used here for “master” is the word “lord” (kurios), the title used throughout Matthew’s Gospel for Jesus and used of him in verses 11,37, and 44 of Matthew 25. So in this parable Jesus is the man, the master, the lord. He is the one who gives the talents to his servants, goes away, returns, and settles the accounts—he judges the workers’ work or lack thereof.
The third thing to note is the talents. Verse 15 reads, “To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.” That phrase “according to his ability” is used in the sense “according to his able-ness” (“power” [dynamis] is the actual word). In other words, if I know that Fred is able to lift heavy objects, I might give him heavy objects to lift. So the ability or able-ness preexists the talent. The talent is something above and beyond the ability. That is not to say that the ability is not also something given, for what do we have that is not a gift from God?
What then is the talent? The talent is money. Just look at the language. The final phrase of verse 14 is, “entrusted to them his property.” Then verses 16,17 talk about the first two servants making more of this property—e.g., “he made five talents more” (v. 16) and “made two talents more” (v. 17). Finally, verse 18 clarifies that this “property” is specifically “money”—“But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money?
Now, of course, this fine deduction of mine would have been elementary for Jesus’ original audience and Matthew’s first readers. Everyone then knew that a talent was a unit of currency, a monetary weight. In our context a penny is the lowest currency and the hundred dollar bill the highest. In Jesus’ context, we know that a denarius (a low unit of currency) was a day’s wages for a common laborer (cp. 20:2) and that a talent (a high unit of currency) was worth six thousand denarii. Thus D. A. Carson equates one talent with “perhaps three hundred thousand dollars.” Grant Osborne, however, claims that one talent, due to the fluctuation in the value of silver or gold, is “worth $800,000 in today’s money ($960,000 when gold is worth $600 an ounce).” I’ll let those two Trinity scholars duke it out. Either way, one talent is an enormous amount of money.
The amount is surprisingly high. And the shock of it is intended to compel us to think of Christ’s generosity. It’s intended to move us to worship. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow!” Jesus gives such great gifts to his Ecclesia. The one, two, four, five, ten talents remind me of the ten thousand talents in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (18:24). Through Christ, God forgives our zillion-dollar debt (“Jesus paid it all”), and in Christ and with Christ he gives us at least three hundred thousand dollars to work with in service to him (“all to him I owe”).
This “talent,” of course, has an elastic quality to it. Let’s remember that this is a parable, not a mathematical equation. So a talent can mean the gifts of knowledge, health, strength, time, intellect, advantages, opportunities, “various responsibilities” (i.e., our jobs or vocations), perhaps people (a spouse, children, friend), and even further natural abilities (talents as we think of the word). A talent can also mean or include “spiritual gifts” as Peter and Paul called them, such as the gifts of teaching, administration, mercy, and so on.
The “talents” symbolize more than money, but not less than money. Listen, just because Jesus is not teaching economic theory here, don’t think that he isn’t teaching some economic truths. Money matters matter to Jesus, and it is the Master’s money (quite plainly) we are dealing with here. While we “need not limit the application of this parable to money matters,” let’s not be so quick to expand “talents” to mean everything except our use of money. Wasn’t it Jesus who said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (6:21)? Might we not expand upon that thought, saying, “How your money/talents are used, there is your heart also”? To our Lord the link between a heart-check and a checkbook is a short, straight line. I'll spare you my Exhortation on “If only the majority of Western Believers tithed (gave 10 percent) of their income ‘much of world poverty could be eradicated and millions more could hear the gospel.’” Such a statistic while true (it is actually true) might be too convicting, and I’d hate for anyone to feel convicted about their use of money... I mean, talents.
Anyway, back to decoding some key symbols. The master symbolizes Jesus, the talents symbolize gifts/responsibilities/money, and the servants symbolize professing Believers, those who would call Jesus “Lord,” are part of his household, and are called upon by him to do his will.
I must admit (as sort of a second aside) that being called a “servant” (or “slave” as the word can be rendered) is a bit hard on my healthy ego. Being called a “slave” is better than being called a “sheep” (stay tuned for 25:32, 33!), but a slave—even a slave who is entrusted with lots of money—is still a slave. Perhaps this humble title is an intentional heart-check for Believers. Are you okay with being a slave or servant to Jesus? Paul was—“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus” (Romans 1:1a). Peter was—“Simon Peter, a bond- servant... of Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:1a, nasb).
The fourth thing to note is what each servant did with what he was given. The first two doubled their master’s money. They also both got to work on their work immediately after the gift was given. Don’t overlook the start of verses 16 and 17: “He who had received the five talents went at once” and got to work, and “So also” the next guy. We see then the opposite of industry and perhaps immediacy in the last guy. He eventually got around to doing something with the money. He dug a hole (did that take an hour or ten minutes to dig?) and buried the money in it. Note the contrast between the “aggressive [and] recessive verbs”—instead of forward-moving verbs like “traded” and “made” used of the first two servants, the third servant “dug” and “hid.”
The Rewards of the Righteous
In verses 14-18 we get the start of the story: the setting is set, the characters introduced, the plot moves into motion. In verses 19-30 we get the end of the story, or Scene Three we can call it. Verse 19 reads, “Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them.” The language of “after a long time” reminds us of the previous parable with the late-arriving bridegroom. The return of Christ may take a long time. The language of “settled accounts” reminds us that Jesus will return as a judge, as the judge of all people from every nation (25:32). Verses 20-30 then speak of the master’s judgment of the faithful and the unfaithful. The faithful are rewarded (vv. 20-23) and the unfaithful punished (vv. 24-30). We’ll look at the unfaithful and their crime and punishment soon. For now we turn our attention to more happy themes. Verses 20-23 are uplifting verses. Let them lift you up as you now read them again:
And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, “Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, “Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”
The extensive parallelisms are evident. The first and second servants both present their talents to the master, both present double what they were given and both are rewarded equally. (That equality is important. As Meier notes, “that both servants receive the same reward shows that what is valued is not one’s accomplishments in a quantitative sense but fidelity of one’s commitment”). To both the Lord says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (vv. 21, 23). The words are identical. The Lord Jesus equally rewards the two faithful servants' equal efforts.
The First Reward
Three rewards are given. First he gives praise-filled approval: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
I’m not someone who suffers from depression. I don’t easily or often get depressed. I thank God for that. True depression can be so awful and debilitating. But I sometimes get discouraged and perhaps you do as well.
I remember when I was in my early twenties and so excited about going into full on preaching when an old pastor (he has now been retired for many years—that’s how old he was then) said that most leave preaching due to discouragement. When he said that, I internally rolled my eyes and thought, What does this old stale Christian leader know about anything? Discouragement? Number one? No way! Well, it turns out that that old bat batted a thousand. Discouragement is my number one nemesis, and it has been for a good decade now.
In fact, I recently told my wife, Emily, as we visited an Ecclesia I helped plant ten years ago, that sometimes I feel with my Ecclesia like I’m flat on the ground with a huge stone on my back. I want to be free to jump and fly—to implement strategic ways to take the gospel to my city and the world, but sometimes I struggle to move forward even two steps. Discouragement—it’s awful.
In Ohio recently, as I was teaching preachers how to preach, I gave an example talk. Afterwards a teacher came up to me and said, “That was a work of art.” What a first-class compliment! And with that compliment I felt the stone roll away. But it was only for a moment. You see, if I do the work I’ve been called to do for his approval or your approval (the praise of man), that stone of discouragement will always roll back onto my back. But if I recognize that I have only an audience of one—my Master, my Lord, my God—and if I am living for the final day and the one and only first-class compliment that matters, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” then I can stay the course, even working with the stone on my back if necessary, knowing that the road to the Kingdom is rough and uphill and dangerous and full of seductive temptations and heavy discouragements.
What is true for me I’m sure is true for you. So, when you are down, look up. When you are turning your attention to the present or the past, turn it to the future when Jesus will reward you with words—praise for you from the one to whom all praise is to be rendered.
The Second Reward
The second reward, which is just as counter intuitive as the first, is more responsibility. After Jesus says, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” he says, “You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much” (vv. 21, 23). In other words, “You have fulfilled this small work project; let me now give you a big one.”
You see, the people (“servants” Jesus calls them—people who serve God and others) of the kingdom of heaven, on earth now and in the Kingdom later, are not passive. To enter into the kingdom through faith in Christ is to enter into his workforce, and it is to return in some sense to Eden, to pre-fall holiness, where work was given to man as a divine gift, not a curse. I’ll put it this way; do your kingdom work well now, and you’ll be rewarded with more work now and especially then. As one commentator put it, “Heavenly rewards are not beds of rest; they are posts of duty.” Or as another one put it, “Christ knows no idle life, not even in the kingdom of heaven.”
The Third Reward
The third reward is the Lord’s joy. I say it that odd way because that’s how Jesus says it. He doesn’t say, “My good and faithful servant, enter into the joys of the Kingdom.” Instead he says, “Enter into the joy of your master" (vv. 21,23).
Listen, Jesus will do whatever it takes for you, dear Believer, to get you through the gates of the kingdom and to the final joy of the kingdom—that heavenly messianic feast with him, the ever-joyous Bridegroom. Sometimes he will use the motive of fear to warn you. (We’ll get to that in a bit.) Other times (right here) he’ll use the motive of relationship to woo you on your way.
1. The first reward is praise-filled approval.
2. The second reward is more responsibility.
3. The third reward (and I say that it is the greatest of the three) is that you and I will someday “enter into the joy” of our Lord and Savior and Friend and Brother and Betrothed.
I want you to take those three future rewards—stick them into your brain, sew them on each chamber of your heart, tattoo them on your hands if need be—and use them to motivate you to press on with your God-given unique and important kingdom work. For you see, what you do with your talents will matter on judgment day, so let them matter to you now.
Crime and Punishment
I wish I could end here, for some of you, like me, just need to be encouraged to keep pressing on. But we are in the Olivet Discourse where the theme of judgment won’t stay down no matter how hard modern Believers try to hammer it. It keeps rising above the surface because there are others in the Ecclesia who need not to be wooed by Jesus but warned by him. So we come now to the end of the matter, the end of the parable, the end stress of all that comes before it. “He who has ears, let him hear” (13:9):
He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” (vv. 24, 25)
Here we have a seemingly pious man. He acknowledges Jesus as “master” or “lord.” (Oh, yes, he’ll join that Ecclesial camp who says, “Lord, Lord” on judgment day, 7:21, 22.) But he takes the Lord’s name in vain. He sees Jesus as a hard or harsh or even mean, merciless, or cruel character who acts unjustly, demanding a harvest from a field where no seeds have been planted. His view of God, if you’ll allow me, is so high it’s too low: “Oh, Lord, you're such a sovereign master, an unmoved mover, that whatever I did with this talent wouldn't matter to you anyway, so I did nothing.” He has cloaked his laziness behind his solemn God-talk excuses. He has a high view of God but a wrong view of God. He has a fear of God but an improper fear of God. And thus he has the audacity to blame generous Jesus for his own apathy and inactivity.
He reminds me a bit of Adam, who said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12). He also reminds me of the church leaders who told the great missionary William Carey when he brought before them his idea of taking the gospel from England to India, “Sit down, young man; when God chooses to save the heathen he will do so without your help or ours!” Really? Have you never read the end of Matthew’s Gospel or that big book in our Bibles that we call the Acts of the Apostles, which talks about the acts of the apostles? Listen, in our parable don’t the two good servants have the balance we all should have between God’s grace and human work—“Master, you gave me five talents [God’s grace]... and here I have made five more [human work]”? Jesus never belittles his servants’ kingdom work, for he knows that he has saved us not only from our sins but unto his service. Jesus Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14).
So you see, this third servant’s master isn’t any different than the first and second servants’ master. He is not cruel but generous, not unjust but fair. And it is this fairness that can seem cruel that we see next in our story. Look at verse 26. “But his master answered him...” Jesus will have none of this blame game. “You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I scattered no seed?” Insert the phrase, “Read as sarcasm.” “What do you know about me? Let’s play your game— that I’m this cruel and unjust sovereign. Even if that’s who I really am, that’s still no excuse for not doing anything. ‘Then you ought to have [at the very least] invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest’ [v. 27], In summary, any way you look at the situation, the issue is not my character flaw; it’s yours.”
This servant has rationalized his sin. His defense is as irrational as hiding a lamp under a bushel basket. The holy and just judge Jesus sees through the servant’s illogical lawlessness, and thus he quickly but rightly renders his verdict:
So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, (vv. 28-30)
The sin here is the sin of omission. We all know that sins of commission—murder, adultery, stealing, and so on—are wrong and worthy of some kind of judgment. But what’s so wicked about sloth? That’s the sin here—sloth (not doing work). The good servants are called “good” and “faithful,” while this last servant, who is no servant at all, is called “wicked” (the opposite of “good”) and “slothful” (is that the opposite of “faithful”?—it is here to Jesus). Unfaithfulness is slothfulness, and slothfulness is a punishable offense.
The punishment is threefold. It’s the opposite of the rewards for the righteous. This man receives no praise, no further work or responsibility (all is taken from him and is given to the first worker), and no joy in the master’s presence. In fact, this now “worthless” man (v. 30; that’s strong language) is “cast... into the outer darkness,” in "that place [where] there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (that’s strong imagery). Our final verse is a picture of the grave, where the emphasis is not on the pain of fire but the pain of separation—no one and nothing to see (“darkness”) and nothing to do (eternally unemployed) but feel “forever the regrets of lost opportunities, misspent chances, stupid choices” (“weeping and gnashing of teeth”).
You don’t want to go to the grave, Brother! That’s what Jesus is getting at with his horror-story ending. So, don’t be lazy with the gifts that you have been given. The point of the parable is that simple and that pointed. It’s to hurt, if need be. It’s to hurt now so it won’t hurt later.
Six Months to Live
One recent summer I was having some heart issues—a tightness in my heart. When I called my doctor and told him the symptoms, he sent me to the emergency room immediately. As the hospital staff was running the first of five tests—an EKG—two thoughts came to my mind. The first was, How much is all this going to cost me? The second was, on a more serious and truthful note, What if this is it? That is, what if they say to me after four hours of tests, “We’ve found something. Your heart has this or that wrong with it. There is nothing we can do. You have six months, at best, to live.” Now, I know little about the human heart, and I’m sure that my concerns were exaggerated. But I thought then what I thought. What would I do?
What would you do? We all have six months to live, or is it six days or six hours or sixty years? Do you know what I would do? Honestly, I would do what I’m doing. I would continue to preach as a dying man to dying men. When I first reflected on all this, I thought, Lord willing, I would finish the Gospel of Matthew and die the Sunday after. That would be a splendid way to go!
What that heart-check (a heart-check in two ways) did for me was (a) to let me know that I know what my Christ-given talents are (do you?), (b) to let me know I’m using them for his kingdom and his glory (are you?), and (c) to let me know that I’m looking forward to my Master’s praise (“Well done”) and to the additional work (“Thanks for doing a little, here’s a lot”) and to the eternal joy of being with Immanuel, “God with us” now and forever (are you?).
Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters, with the talents Christ has given you—whether it is something much esteemed in our society (the gift of being a heart specialist) or something little esteemed (the gift of children and raising children to know and love the Lord), please learn from this parable (if you learn anything) that you are to “ be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
(R. Kent Hughes. and Douglas Sean O'Donnell., 2013; edited Carl Hinton., 2020)