Every Last Word

Guest (Male): God has given us the ability to do many things for him. Some people have the ability to give a lot, while others only a little. But no matter how much God has given, are your talents being used for him? Turn to the Gospel of Luke and let's learn how we're to use that which God has given us.

Guest (Female): Welcome to Every Last Word, a radio and internet program with Dr. Philip Ryken, teaching the whole Bible to change your whole life. Today, we continue our studies in the Gospel of Luke. We'll be learning what it means to invest our time and abilities for God's glory.

Mark: Phil, we’re often volunteering our time and energy to do things for the church community. But instead of first receiving a thank you, we're usually asked to do other things, and then that thank you never comes, just more work. Why is that?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Mark, sometimes people say that 20% of the people do 80% of the work when it comes to ministry in the church. You're probably one of those 20-percenters knowing you. But one of the great rewards for faithful service is actually further opportunities for service. We see that pattern worked out again and again in the Bible. We'll certainly see it in the parable that Jesus tells in today's sermon.

What should we do for God's kingdom when we don't think we're very talented or we don't have a lot of money? Sometimes people do get discouraged when they feel like they don't have very much to offer. Maybe they don't have very many financial resources. Maybe they don't feel like they have very obvious gifts. But the truth is that God has given to each one of us something that we can use for kingdom service.

Whatever we have, we should give. If we have financial resources, we should give those joyfully. If we have some other gift, whatever it is, we should be using it, trusting the Lord that he will bless the work that we do in his name. Even as I say that, I can't help but think this is a great opportunity to give a thank you on the air to all of the people that support this radio ministry. We cannot do this work without the help of those who give. We're grateful we are for the way that they're using their gifts.

Mark: Got it. Thank you, Phil. Let's turn in our Bibles now to Luke chapter 19, verses 11 through 27, and listen together to Dr. Ryken.

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Please turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 19, where this week we consider what is usually called the Parable of the Pounds in verses 11 through 27. I begin this week with a history lesson, which I think will help us to understand the context for the parable that Jesus told.

The history lesson begins with the death of Herod in the year 4 BC. Upon his death, it was obvious to almost everyone that his son, Archelaus, would take his throne in Judea. And yet, there was only one man in all the world who had the power and authority to crown Archelaus as king. It was, of course, the Emperor Caesar in Rome.

Archelaus and his entourage made the long journey to Rome where he fully expected to be crowned as king in the temple of the Palatine Apollo. Unfortunately for Archelaus, there was active opposition to his monarchy. When he arrived in Rome, he found that there were members of his own family who were rival claimants to the throne.

Worse than that, a delegation of 50 Jewish leaders had come from Jerusalem seeking an audience with Caesar and claiming that Archelaus was unfit to govern. During Passover, there had been a disturbance at the temple, and soldiers of Archelaus had put to death some 3,000 worshippers. The delegation from Jerusalem, backed by thousands of Jews living in the city of Rome itself, petitioned Caesar to liberate them from the authority of Archelaus.

The whole business took much longer than anyone expected, but eventually Caesar decided to give Archelaus the opportunity to prove that he was worthy to be the king. Not surprisingly, when he returned to Judea, he executed swift punishment against the men who rebelled against his rule. There was a man who went away as a contender but returned as the king, ready to exercise his royal authority.

This episode from Israel's history happened not long after the birth of Jesus Christ. It was still in living memory some 30 years later, and it seems to form the backdrop for this parable that Jesus told about investing with the gospel. Jesus was on his way up from Jericho to Jerusalem. It was nearly Passover. On that Jericho road, Jesus would pass by the king's old winter palace. It was only natural for him to think about Archelaus and what had happened.

Jesus said, beginning in verse 12, "A nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return. Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas and said to them, 'Engage in business until I come.' But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We do not want this man to reign over us.'"

The parable is nearly exactly what happened to Archelaus. Here is a man traveling to a far country, hoping to receive the kingdom and then return. Yet his citizens hate him, and they send a delegation to prevent his coronation. But Jesus was not talking so much about Archelaus as he was about himself.

He wasn't making a comparison of his character to wicked Archelaus, to be sure. He was only drawing the comparison with the familiar circumstances of that kingship. Jesus was the nobleman. He was the son of the high King, and he was about to receive a kingdom all his own. In a manner of speaking, he would travel to a far country to get it. He would pass through death, through the empty grave, before being crowned in the courts of heaven and eventually returning to his people again.

Sadly, many citizens would reject his royal authority. Some of them would put him to death. Others would deny the reality of his resurrection. Others would refuse to acknowledge his ascension to royal glory. Lodging their protest in the courts of heaven itself, they would say of Jesus, "We do not want this man to reign over us." Indeed, some people say that very thing to this very day. They refuse to acknowledge the kingship of Jesus Christ. They say, "I don't want him to be my Lord or my Savior."

Perhaps the most significant parallel here to the kingship of Christ is the delay in his return. Verse 11 says, "As they heard these things," that is, the things that Jesus had been saying to Zacchaeus about the coming of the Son of Man, "he proceeded to tell a parable because he was near to Jerusalem and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately."

It's easy to understand why people would make this kind of mistake. The more that they heard about Jesus, the more that they saw what Jesus could do, the more certain they became that he was the King, that he was the Messiah. He was healing the blind. He was saving sinners, including the kind of rich people that almost never repent. He was preaching the kingdom of God.

Soon the masses would gather him up and sweep him right up to Jerusalem in a frenzy of Messianic expectancy. It was almost Palm Sunday. We are almost at the point of Passion Week. Soon the people would shout, "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord." With all that expectation, it is any wonder that they thought the kingdom of God was coming right away.

At the same time, is it any wonder why Jesus was careful to correct them? Yes, the kingdom, in a sense, had come, but it had not yet come in the fullness of its final glory. Jesus still needed to suffer and die on the cross. He still needed to rise from the dead and ascend to heaven. More importantly, he still needed to do all of his gospel work among the nations through the church, and that would take centuries to accomplish.

Although the kingdom in one sense had come, in another sense, it wouldn't come until Jesus came again. Therefore, we find ourselves in this long interim between the already and the not yet, between what is now and what is yet to come. The question is: how should we live in the meantime as we wait for the return of our King?

This is the great question of our lives. It's also the question that Jesus answers in this parable. We are waiting for the Second Coming, and the question is: are we living as faithful servants of the coming King? This long delay between his departure and his return reveals our true relationship to Jesus Christ.

We see here two groups of people waiting for his return: former servants and future subjects. He had many enemies among those citizens. They were out-and-out rebels. They were like the people that opposed Archelaus. They rejected the kingship of the King. Sadly, many people had the same attitude about Jesus as he made his way to the cross. They were against him. They were opposed to him. They didn't recognize that he was the King. They didn't acknowledge his rightful rule.

Very soon, they would be calling for his crucifixion and they would be saying to Pilate those terrible words, "We have no king but Caesar." We will see what happened to those rebels at the end of this parable. But most of the parable has to do with the King's servants. There were ten of them in all, each of them given a mina to manage in his absence. A mina was worth about three months' wages. Not perhaps a huge sum of money, but certainly enough to find out if these servants could be trusted to serve their master.

As he gave them their minas, the nobleman said to them, "Engage in business until I come." The servants were to live in the expectation of his return. They were called to be busy about his business, putting his money to work with the goal of turning a good profit. These ten servants, these money managers, represent the servants of Christ the King.

This is our situation. We're waiting for his royal return, and in the meantime, until he comes, we are called to carry out the spiritual business of his kingdom. But what do you suppose this money represents? It's important here to recognize an important difference between this parable and a similar parable in the Gospel of Matthew that's probably more familiar.

That parable, usually called the Parable of the Talents, recorded in Matthew chapter 25, says nothing specifically about a king. But it does tell the story of a man who goes on a long journey and who gives his servants money to manage in his absence. In that parable, each servant was given a different amount of money, depending upon his ability.

Therefore, the parable in Matthew has a great deal to teach us about how we all have different talents to use in serving the Lord. But in this parable, each servant receives the same amount of money. It's one mina per servant. While it's true that we all have different gifts and maybe we could say that some have more or fewer gifts than others, that's not the point of the parable here in Luke.

This parable is more about faithfulness than it is about giftedness. The point is that every believer in Jesus Christ has the same responsibility to work hard for the kingdom until Jesus comes again. We all have received the same gospel. Maybe we could say that's what the money represents: the gospel that Jesus has given us and that he now wants us to put to use in the world.

The gospel is simply the good news of God's grace. It's the message of salvation through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the royal offer of life and forgiveness through the cross and the empty tomb. God has deposited that gospel with us. He's entrusted it to us. The New Testament often uses the language of deposit with reference to the gospel.

Now Jesus wants us to use that gospel so that he can make it grow. We are to multiply our spiritual capital, to invest the gospel with the goal of increasing the yield of the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. The question for practical application from that is fairly obvious: how are you putting the gospel to work? What is it doing in your life? What return are you making on God's investment? What profit, if any, will you have to show when Jesus comes again?

The way we put the gospel to work is by growing in our own Christian lives, through repentance, through prayer, and through daily dependence upon the work of the Holy Spirit. We put the gospel to work by really trusting God in all the circumstances of life, believing that he will meet our needs, that he will give us the guidance we need, that he will provide for our future, and that he will help us in every difficult or troubling circumstance.

But it's not just in our own Christian life that we put the gospel to work. We put it to work in the lives of others as we serve them in Jesus' name. We serve people in need. We show them the love and the mercy of Christ. We offer this to the lonely, to the sick, to the homeless, to the grieving, and to those who are fearful and afraid.

We put the gospel to work by serving them in the name of Jesus. Then we put the gospel to work by loving our families in the name of Jesus. We put it to work by sharing our faith with our friends. We put it to work by participating in the missionary work of the gospel, praying, giving, sending, and going to the nations with the good news about Jesus Christ.

In all of these ways, we are putting the gospel to work. We need to recognize that Jesus is coming again very soon. He's asking us this question through the teaching of this parable: are you getting busy for Jesus with the gospel? This is the question we need to consider.

One day, the King will return. When he comes, he will come with the full authority of his royal kingdom. When he returns, one of the very first things that he will want to know is whether we can be trusted to serve him well, and it will be based on what we have done in his absence.

Notice how Jesus describes the situation in the parable, picking up at verse 15: "When he returned, having received the kingdom, he ordered these servants to whom he had given the money to be called to him, that he might know what they had gained by doing business." What have you gained by doing God's spiritual business? The day of return is a day of reckoning, and on that day, the King rightly demands the fruit of faithful service.

Two of the servants had made good on the King's investment at varying rates of return. The first came before him saying, "Lord, your mina has made ten minas more." And he said to him, "Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities." The second came saying, "Lord, your mina has made five minas." And he said to him, "And you are to be over five cities."

It doesn't take a business degree to recognize that this is a pretty good return on your rate of investment. Anyone who can turn a profit of 1,000% or even 500% knows how to manage people's money. Jesus told this parable to help us understand the spiritual economy of the kingdom of God.

Let's consider all the things that this King's return teaches us about the business of God's kingdom, and specifically about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. We are taught that our King is coming again and that when he comes, he will hold us all accountable for what we have done with what we have. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done.

The parable teaches further that the King himself will praise his faithful servants and he will reward them in a way proportionate to their service. A man who made ten received ten cities. The man who made five received five times the reward, and so on. There was a proportionality here. From this, we can infer that some believers will receive greater honor than others, according to what they did with what they had.

Of course, it's also true, and the Bible speaks a great deal to this as well, that we will all gain the same entrance into glory. We will all receive Christ and all the benefits that he has to offer. But we see here, and in other places in the New Testament, that there will be reward upon reward for the faithful servants of God, depending on the fruitfulness of their service.

These kingdom rewards are presented as further opportunities for service. The man who managed the one mina well now has a different responsibility of management. He's managing ten cities. What he receives is not so much a reward as it is a responsibility. He has been faithful in doing something small and now he is given by the grace of God the trust to do something larger.

This is the way that things work in the kingdom of God. We don't begin with the big things, but with the little things. If we're faithful with them, then God will give us bigger things to do. It's a reminder not to be discontent with a smaller sphere of ministry but to be patient even with obscure obedience, believing that a wider ministry will come when the time is right. Maybe that won't happen until the Second Coming, but it will come at the time that God intends.

Eventually, the reward for faithful service will be a greater opportunity to serve. Of course, that's what a servant wants more than anything else in the world. This will be our great reward: the greater opportunity we will have to glorify God by serving Jesus Christ. We can only imagine what vast enterprises that we will engage in when we enter into God's everlasting kingdom. It will be the great joy of our ongoing service to continue to serve and to serve to the glory of God.

The rewards of the kingdom are proportionate, but in another sense, they are completely out of proportion to the work that we do. Notice here that the man who manages a single mina ends up ruling ten cities. It's far more than he could ever imagine. In the same way, whatever rewards God may have for us when Jesus returns will be infinitely beyond our deserving.

The Bible promises that when the King returns, everyone who trusts in him will reign with him in glory. The Bible speaks of our sitting on the throne with Jesus Christ himself, ruling over nations and over kingdoms. Someday, by the grace of God, you will sit with Jesus on the very throne of the universe.

In the expectation of eternity, what are you doing with what you have? Jesus is watching. He's the King. He's preparing for his return. In the meantime, he wants to see if we can be trusted to serve him. What we do with our time and our money, what we do with the gospel, these things have an eternal significance.

We waste so much time thinking about our earthly ambitions, the plans that we have for this life, when God has greater glories in store. We need to serve him with that kind of mindset. I think of the words of Hudson Taylor, who said, "A little thing is just a little thing, but faithfulness in a little thing is a great thing." This is true of all the things that we do for Jesus. In one sense, they're all little things. But if we are faithful in those things, on the day when Jesus returns, we will see what a great thing that is because our reward will be confirmed in glory where even the little things that we do with the gospel will receive their true reward.

That's what happened to the first two servants. They received their reward. But now there was one servant who failed to serve the King. Where do you find yourself in this parable? The parable was as much about him as it was about anyone else. We see what happened to him in verse 20: "Then another came, saying, 'Lord, here is your mina, which I kept laid away in a handkerchief, for I was afraid of you.'"

What this servant failed to do was shocking. In complete defiance of his instructions, he wrapped his coin in a handkerchief and he hid it under his mattress or whatever people did in those days, and he simply waited for his master to return. Rather than putting his money to good use, this unprofitable servant refused to use the gift that he was given.

I suppose most people were more enterprising in those days. This was a culture that thrived on trading and bartering. If you had some money, you tried to use it to get a little bit more. But here was a man who was so afraid of what he might lose that he failed to work for what he could gain.

Many people do the same thing with the gifts that come from God. Rather than putting the gospel to good use, they're afraid to talk about their faith. They're afraid to give God more of their money than they think they can spare. They're afraid to do anything for Jesus that goes beyond their own abilities and thus forces them to trust in the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.

They're always holding back, seeking to do less rather than more for the kingdom of God. That kind of holding back is not humility. It's pride. It is rebellion. It is fear. Rather than accepting the responsibility for that and owning up to his failure, this servant tries to blame his master.

"I was afraid of you," he said, "because you are a severe man. You take what you did not deposit, and you reap what you did not sow." It's not my fault that I'm afraid; it's your fault for being so frightening. Even if I make some money with what you gave me, you're just going to take it away, so why would I even bother? According to this servant's perspective, he did not think that he could be expected to work for someone like this who demanded something for nothing.

Isn't this the same attitude that many people have towards God? They view him as a harsh taskmaster who never gives but only takes, who never donates but only demands. We see that this is slander. This is blasphemy against the character of God, as it was slander against the character of this worthy nobleman.

The truth is that God has given us everything we have. He's given us the very air that we are breathing. Furthermore, through Jesus, God has offered himself for our sins. How could we ever say or even think what this man thought, that God has done nothing for us? When we go to the cross, we see that he has done everything for us. Therefore, anything that God would demand would only be the return of what we have received.

This servant's very unflattering assessment of his master is really contradicted by what we see in the parable. The master was not stingy; he was very generous with his faithful servants. But just for the sake of argument, the master momentarily granted the servant's premise. I don't think the nobleman agreed with it, but just for the sake of argument, he was willing to go along with it to make his point.

The master said to him, "I will condemn you with your own words, you wicked servant! You knew that I was a severe man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money in the bank, and at my coming I might have collected it with interest?" Even on his own terms, the servant should have done better than he did. At least he should have taken his money to the bank. But he should at least have given it to someone who knew how to put the money to good use.

Do you see how wicked the servant was? That's how Jesus described him. And really, what else would you call a servant who refuses to obey his master's command, who slanders his master's good name, and who is so scared of making a mistake that he doesn't do what he is supposed to do?

According to Jesus, it is wickedness not to use what we have to serve our God. When we think about everything that God has done for us and how much we owe him as a debt of gratitude for his grace, it's wickedness not to respond to that by doing everything we can to do the work of the gospel. Knowing how Jesus looks at this kind of situation helps us understand what happens at the end of this parable.

The newly crowned King said to those who stood by, "Take the mina from him, and give it to the one who has the ten minas." How ironic this was, and how tragic. All the man wanted to do was just hold on to what he had. But because of his disobedience, even that was taken away from him. Here is a case of the richer get richer while the poor get poorer. Or to put it even more bluntly, here is a case of "use it or lose it."

Immediately, the other servants raised the obvious objection. They said to him, "Lord, he has ten minas." In other words, that's not fair. Why should someone who has so much get even more, while someone who has next to nothing loses even what little he has? Rather than denying that this is a fair or right or worthy thing to do, the King responds by saying, "I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away."

What a hard saying that is. But simply from the standpoint of business, wouldn't you agree that from the standpoint of good business, this was the obvious thing to do? Which of these servants would you entrust with that last mina? Who would make the best use of that mina that had been in the handkerchief? It wasn't the third servant; he wasn't going to do anything with it.

Money should be invested with someone who has proven that he knows how to make it grow, rather than risking it all on someone who by his own negligence is going to be teetering on the very verge of bankruptcy. As a shrewd investor, Jesus takes the same approach to the work we do in ministry. He has entrusted us with the gospel, and now he wants us to be venture capitalists, spiritually speaking.

If we handle his investment well, he will give us even more good work to do for the kingdom of God. This is the way God's spiritual economy operates. But if we refuse to do anything for Jesus at all, what should he do with us? What should he do with what he has given to us? With Jesus, it is all or nothing.

Scholars have long wondered whether this third servant was saved in the end or whether he was lost forever. The story doesn't exactly say. Maybe the wicked servant stands for someone who's in the church but does not have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. He is wicked after all, and he does lose even the gospel or at least the opportunity to use it for the King. Here's a man who has no real love for the master, whose service is so unfaithful that he has failed to bear any fruit.

Sometimes there are people like this in the church. They're outwardly exposed to the gospel. They have it in a certain sense. They don't have a living relationship with Jesus Christ, though, and so there's no real fruit coming from their lives. Maybe this servant is that kind of person.

Luke's parable is different from the one in Matthew. There, the worthless servant is thrown into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. There's no doubt in the Gospel of Matthew where this third servant would fall. But here Luke doesn't indicate that in so many words. And you might argue that there's a distinction here between the wicked servant and the citizens, those traitors who rejected the King outright and who met an even more terrible fate.

"But as for these enemies of mine," said the King, "who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me." That clearly refers to the final judgment and the damnation of the enemies of God. On the day of his royal return, Jesus the King will destroy every traitor to his cause and every rebel against his kingdom.

Where do you find yourself in this parable? The wicked servant is not explicitly included with these enemies of the King. Maybe he managed to escape their horrible fate. Maybe he represents a fearful believer who does almost nothing for God but still has some faith in Jesus Christ. Maybe he's the kind of person described in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, someone who suffers loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Maybe this servant was that kind of man, someone who barely gets saved. But his case seems far from hopeful. His salvation seems far from secure. He is paralyzed by fear. He's motivated only by his own self-preservation. He never does anything courageous for the kingdom of God. And in the end, he loses his reward. Maybe with it, his very salvation.

Where do you find yourself in this parable? What are you doing with what you have? The master has been gone a long time, but one day soon, he will come again in royal triumph. Will he find that you are working hard for his kingdom? Will he find that you're making wise investments with your time and your money, the kinds of investments that will strengthen your spiritual portfolio, so to speak? What are you doing with the gospel?

As I ask myself these questions, I have to confess I have done precious little for Jesus, especially when compared with how much he has done for me. Some people might be surprised in a way to hear me say that. I was talking to a man at the end of the last service. He said, "I'm the same age as you are, and I'm always saying to myself, 'Look at Phil Ryken and look at what he's done,' and then I compare myself to that."

The truth is I have not done very much at all, really. Maybe you've done more than I have done. Maybe you've done less, at least as the world would look at it. Whatever you have done with what you have, how could it ever be enough for Jesus? That is the real point: how could it ever be enough?

As I feel the guilt of my own failures, many lost opportunities, I remember the gospel. That gospel that the Lord Jesus has entrusted to me, the gospel that he wants me to use in my own Christian life and in my own ministry. What that gospel tells me is that my acceptance before God is not based on who I am or what I have done.

It is based on who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. I think our own confession of faith says it so well. The Westminster Confession of Faith says: "The persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works also are accepted in Christ." It's not just me that God accepts in Christ; it's also what I have done. That too is accepted in Christ. It doesn't have to be accepted on its own merits. It doesn't have to be accepted because of who I am and what I have done, but because of Jesus and who he is and what he has done.

Because God looks upon me in his Son, for that reason, he is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections. Praise God for that! Because of the gospel, what I do, what you do, is accepted in Jesus. He is not a harsh taskmaster. He is a generous King who loves to reward infinitely beyond measure the servants who love him and who are seeking sincerely to serve him, however small their service. When I see that's who Jesus really is, that just makes me want to serve him all the more.

Our Father in heaven, we give you praise for the grace that you have for us in Jesus. Father, we confess that in so many ways we have not been making the kinds of investments in the gospel in the kingdom of God that you want us to make. Father, would you forgive us for Jesus' sake? Would you accept for Jesus' sake what we do offer? And by the Holy Spirit, would you teach us and guide us to offer more than we ever have before? In Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Female): You're listening to Every Last Word with Bible teacher, Dr. Philip Ryken, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance exists to promote a biblical understanding and worldview, drawing upon the insight and wisdom of Reformed theologians from decades and even centuries gone by. We seek to provide Christian teaching that will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place.

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