Running To Win

Dave: Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. For every Olympic track star, there are 10,000 runners who never make the team. But that's no reason to give up. Many believers with few talents approach life with a clenched fist rather than an open hand. Today, we'll see why God prefers the better. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line.

Pastor Lutzer, some see the master's actions in Matthew chapter 25 as unduly harsh. What say you?

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Of course we should never be critical of what Jesus has to say. What we should do is be sobered by his analysis of this man and to realize that all of us are going to give an account to God for the way in which we lived. This is very serious. We have to recognize that our lives are constantly being evaluated by the Lord and someday we shall be rewarded, or we shall receive a lack of rewards, all because of our faithfulness or unfaithfulness.

Speaking of faithfulness, recently one of the passages of scripture I have been praying for myself and my wife, as well as our grandchildren, comes from the book of Colossians chapter one where the apostle Paul says that he wants his people for whom he is praying to be strengthened with all might for endurance with patience and joy. Endurance means that once we begin the race, we are faithful to the end.

Would you consider becoming an endurance partner for this ministry? Endurance partners are those who pray for us regularly and support this ministry. If you want to know more about it, go to rtwoffer.com and click on the endurance partner button. That is rtwoffer.com. Click on the endurance partner button and become a partner with us in sharing the gospel around the world. Now let us go to the pulpit of the Moody Church.

The man was so concerned as to how he looked in the presence of others. He was so self-conscious. He thought, I am in the presence of those who have five talents and I have only got one. He was totally wrong about life. God has a sense of humor. God uses some people that we wouldn't use. I have seen this happen. I have seen God use people that I wouldn't use if I were God.

In his mercy and his grace, God makes us all different. When we are feeling inferior, the criticism is directed ultimately toward God. We are saying, why did you create me thus? That is the third mistake he made right there. He had a wrong attitude toward the Lord. He had a wrong attitude about himself, a wrong attitude toward life, and a wrong attitude about the Lord.

He says in verse 24, "Master, I knew you to be a hard man. You reap where you did not sow and you gather where you'd scattered no seed. So I was afraid and I hid your talent in the ground. Here it is for you." Notice what he is saying. He is critical of God. He is saying, God, you are just exploiting us. You expect us to make money with the money that you have given to us and then you come and you receive all that money. That is true, by the way. The reason that God can demand that is because the money that he gives us is his and our ability to multiply it is his as well.

He was critical of God. There are many people who are very critical of God. They say, God, why is it that you have put me in this predicament with my limited abilities and my limited resources? Why is it, oh God, that I have been asked to play this role? You are harsh and you are demanding. He actually becomes angry with the Lord, saying, you are not fair to me.

God wasn't pleased. After an explanation like that, I guess the man expected the king to say, that really makes sense. I understand your viewpoint. I am trying to see life through your lenses and so I think that is fine then. But he doesn't hear that. He hears some very harsh words: "You wicked, lazy slave." He had dug a hole for his talent. What he didn't realize is that he had actually dug a hole for himself. He thought that his service for the master, because he had only one talent, was unimportant.

I want you to notice what this man lost, and he lost big. First of all, he lost the approval of his master. There was no "well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord." As he looked into the eyes of the king, there was no word of appreciation. There was no word of thanks from the man who was most important.

That is the one thing that causes me to tremble a little bit. I have in my brief life received quite a bit of praise from men. Actually, when I stand before the Lord, I won't be able to say, Lord, look at all those letters that we received from a radio audience. They won't make one bit of difference. If Jesus says to me, Lutzer, you served with the wrong motives, you served with the wrong desires, you squandered your time, the opinion of somebody else, even the opinion of the world applauding me, will not make up for it from now until eternity. Only what Jesus thinks matters in the final analysis. There is no other recourse.

He missed the approval of his master. The Bible says that we should live in such a way that we will not be ashamed at his coming. Most of us think that the judgment seat of Jesus Christ is just going to take a moment. We think if we did poorly, 10 minutes into eternity everybody will forget how badly we did and therefore it won't make any difference. It will make a big difference, as we are going to see in just a moment. He missed the approval of his master, and that is really what counts.

That is why it is possible to be faithful even when you are misunderstood. That is why it is possible to be faithful even though there are those who are saying things about you that aren't true. Ultimately, the opinion of the other slaves is no big deal. It is the opinion of the master that is important. He missed the approval of his master. He lost the opportunity for growth in character. The other slaves received the wonderful words, "thou good and faithful servant," but he didn't hear those words. He had no opportunity for spiritual growth.

He missed the privilege of greater responsibilities. All of the others were taken and brought into the kingdom and given more responsibility. In a parallel account, Jesus said that if you had 10 talents and you were faithful with those 10 talents, you got to serve over 10 cities in the kingdom. Here is somebody who doesn't get to serve in any of the cities in the kingdom, but actually is thrown into a place of outer darkness. I take him to be an unconverted person, even though Jesus in another parable tells a similar story where the man apparently is a Christian. Here, he is not.

I want you to understand that there are some lessons from this parable that are so explosive that if we were to take them seriously, today would be a major turning point in our lives regarding faithfulness. Number one, your talent—and here we are talking about money as well as ability—is your trust. You do not own the money that God has given you the ability to make. You do not own the gifts and the talents that you have. Notice what the text says in verse 14: "For it is just like a man about to go on a journey who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them." These aren't theirs.

By nature we are greedy. By nature we grasp. By nature we cling. By nature we say, this is mine. By nature we say, I have a right to hide this money in the ground or in the bank. When the Holy Spirit of God works deeply into people's hearts, it is said that there are two conversions: the conversion of the heart and the conversion of the pocketbook. Some people are only half-converted. We begin to recognize that all that we have is God's.

Some of you businessmen are so gifted in your ability to organize and to manage. Please remember that Jesus watches you every single day to know whether that talent and ability is being invested for him, or whether you think it is something for which you have the right to say, this is mine. Every day we are being monitored. Your talent is your trust. You have the ability to write letters to friends and to missionaries. You have the ability to encourage. You have the ability to usher. You have the ability to do whatever it is that God has called you to do, and I want you to know that God holds you accountable. It is a gift of God.

Not only is your talent your trust, but secondly, your talent is your test. I have been studying the life of Joseph. When Joseph was thrown into the prison, the Bible says in the Psalms the Lord tested him. Falsely accused, he had done right. Falsely accused of attempted rape, he resisted temptation and that is what he gets for serving God. He said no to Potiphar's wife, and of course God blessed him, right? No, he gets a prison term for two years, and the text says that God tested him.

That is true of all of us. Our talent is our test. Why do you think that you are on this earth? One of the most important reasons is so that God might know how and where to slot you in the coming kingdom. It is like a college entrance exam. You don't know whether or not you are ready for advanced French or freshman French. They don't know where to put you, and so they give you a test so that they will know where you are slotted once school begins.

That is what God is doing. He is saying, Daryl, I'm giving you the privilege of either being a ruler over 10 cities or five cities, and the way you serve here on earth is going to determine where you're going to be slotted. He is saying to all of us that our faithfulness or lack of it upon planet earth is going to have, to some extent, repercussions throughout all of eternity because it will depend on the responsibilities given to you in the kingdom.

You may think everybody in heaven is going to be happy, surely. Everybody in heaven is going to be happy, but there are some people who are going to be given more responsibilities. If you had a kingdom here on earth, you'd have some people who would serve the king more directly at the king's table, while there would be others who would have other responsibilities. In the coming kingdom, everybody is going to be happy and serving, but where you are plugged in is determined by whether or not you are faithful. Are you in church on time? Do you prepare your Sunday school lesson? Do you give consistently, or only whenever you feel like it? All of that is being put into the equation as to where you're going to fit into the kingdom.

The idea that somehow we can fritter our time away in the kingdom of the Lord and then hear "well done, thou good and faithful servant" is nonsense. Your talent is your trust. Thirdly, whatever you don't use, you will lose. You may say the king was unreasonable. It is interesting that you would think that. Guess what? God is not asking you for your opinion.

Sometimes I give all kinds of opinions to God, even though he doesn't ask me. I give him mine anyway. It just feels good to know that at least I let him know what I think. But notice what the king does. He says, "Take the one away." You may say, at least he presented the one talent that he was given. There are some people who think as long as they have not sustained any losses when they see Jesus Christ, as long as they can still prove to him that they have essentially what they started out with, that will be good enough.

The king said to take what he has got and give it to somebody else. A person like that is unworthy. We say that we have unconditional worth, but notice that this person is spoken of as being an unworthy servant in the worst sense of the word. I'm concerned about our lack of enthusiastic, exciting involvement in the ministries of Moody Church, whether it has to do with the attendance at prayer meeting or Sunday school. Sometimes we look at the work of God with utter disdain in comparison with the way in which we serve in other capacities.

If you have a job down in the loop, you know that your boss would never say to you, "Well, you've been on time three out of five times, I guess that's okay." That would be intolerable. They don't work like that on LaSalle Street. But this church also is on LaSalle Street. It makes little difference sometimes whether we are on time or whether we give consistently, because we think to ourselves that we can do as we like.

How about those of you who pay for a mortgage? My wife and I do. It is that monthly experience of having to write out the mortgage. How many of you think that your mortgage company would say to you, "Actually, you've paid 10 out of 12 times last year. That's pretty good. We'll accept that." Yet when it comes to giving to the church, we may not give with any kind of regularity. We say, "Well, I gave three out of eight Sundays. That's pretty good."

Why is it that we treat our daily work, which should be done for God, and our financial institutions with so much more respect, honor, and concern than we attend to the blessings and the ministry of the church? We know that we're going to have to look into the eyes of Jesus. We also know that he is not going to be too quick to accept excuses. You lazy slave. Throw him out. I gave him all that money and all that he did is keep it. Sometimes we fritter it away and this is all we have to show.

I like to tell the story about some men who were walking through a desert and came to a well with a pump. Pumps frequently have to be primed, and on the well there was a can of water that said, "Use this can of water to prime the pump. If you do this, you will have enough water for yourself and for those who are traveling with you." Here you have a group of people who are thirsting to death. They have the option. They could drink the water in the small pail, and that would be certain. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Or they could take the risk of pouring it down into the pump and trusting that the note was right.

That's what God does. He asks, "Are you willing to take the risk of letting me become King and Lord over your talents, over your money, over absolutely everything? If you do, trust me to multiply it for you. I'll even give you more." Most of us are saying, "Lord, if you give me more, I promise to be faithful." God says, "You be faithful and I'll give you more." That is the teaching of scripture. We must be able to say in faith, "I'm willing to give it all to you."

If you're here today and you've never received Jesus Christ as Savior, the biggest mistake that you could possibly make is to think that you must be very faithful in order to be saved. The Bible teaches that when Jesus died on the cross, he made a sacrifice for sin. Those who believe in him as Savior are saved. They receive the free gift of eternal life. They come helplessly to look to Jesus Christ. After you are saved, that is the time to be faithful and give an account to Jesus Christ. If God is distant and you don't know how to be rightly related to him, it is not a matter of saying you are going to be faithful. It is a matter of saying, "I come as a sinner and I receive the free gift of eternal life."

Whatever God has talked to you about today, would you respond to him? Let's pray. Father, I pray that you might take these words so inadequately spoken and use them to shake all of us to reality to realize that we are going to give an account to you. So many of us look at this one-talent person and feel exactly as he did. We're intimidated in the presence of others who are more gifted than we are. We feel self-conscious. You were displeased because he wasn't faithful with what he had. Lord, make us faithful.