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Welcome to today’s Daily Scripture Reading and Meditation covering Matthew 25:29-30 wherein we see a line drawn in the sand between the investors and the diggers.
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.
Don’t you love all of Jesus’ parables about cuddly puppies, fuzzy kittens, and fluffy white clouds? Or maybe I’m thinking of some other storyteller. The striking statement here from the Savior is one that comes at the end of His parable about the talents given to workers who were to invest toward the profit of the master. Two were obedient and rewarded with more, the other buried his and was thrown into the outer darkness. The principle that Jesus lays down for our observation in light of this story must be examined carefully if we’re to understand how the Lord looks at mankind. At first glance, it almost sounds as if He is saying that God loves and rewards the rich while saying literally, “to hell with the poor.” Nothing could be farther from the truth, for we must understand first that when we come to these verses, Jesus has transitioned in His story from even talking about money to revealing truth about the spiritual kingdom of heaven that He had begun with. Everything in the middle of the account is simply an illustration for how things work within this kingdom.
Notice that the “has” and “has not” language is meant to draw our attention to what has been done with what the servants have been given by the hand of their master. We know this because the one who doesn’t do any investing with the talent he has been given, even what he has will be taken away. In other words, to cut right to the chase, we are not saved or lost based upon the hand that we’ve been dealt in life, but evaluated according to what we do with that hand. The “five talent man” that Jesus spoke of ended up being over twice as “wealthy” as the “two talent man,” but both were rewarded for their faithfulness, not for getting a certain sum in the first place.
The question then becomes, “What are we doing with what we’ve been given?” If we spend our time comparing ourselves to the highly gifted or are crippled by our weaknesses instead of capitalizing on our God-given abilities, we will miss the point of being engaged in kingdom work. All our efforts, insomuch as they are done in faith and channeled according to truth, are worthwhile efforts. We are reminded constantly about the frailty of life and the shortness of time, so let us put to work all that the Master has entrusted to our care, however much it might be, today.
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