Take your Bibles with me and turn to the book of Luke, chapter 19, this morning.
One of my favorite passages to preach is the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. A master goes away, gives three servants different amounts of money to invest, comes back after a long time, and judges them for what they did with it. The servant who buried his talent is sharply judged — his is taken away and given to the one who had ten.
The passage we've come to this morning is similar to that parable but it's not the same parable. It was given at a different time, the details are different, and the application isn't exactly the same. It's actually a little MORE punchy than Matthew 25.
This parable basically reveals all of us to be one of three different types of people, and each of those three types has a different end to their story.
Sometimes I tell my kids: look where the track is headed before you hop on the train. We get to make choices about the kind of person we're going to be. We need the foresight to look at where those stories end before we make our decisions.
This parable reveals that there are only three destinations. There are only three stories to choose from. Which story are you going to choose this morning?
Let's read our text.
[11] And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.
[12] He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.
[13] And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.
[14] But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.
[15] And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.
[16] Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds.
[17] And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.
[18] And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds.
[19] And he said likewise to him, Be thou also over five cities.
[20] And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin:
[21] For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow.
[22] And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow:
[23] Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?
[24] And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.
[25] (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.)
[26] For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.
[27] But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.
*Luke 19:11-27 (KJV)
Remember Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem, which means He's on His way to the cross. That's not how the disciples and the huge crowd following Him are seeing things. They are over the moon excited about the potential of Jesus coming to Jerusalem at Passover with these huge crowds and setting up His kingdom right now. They have no idea what is about to happen even though Jesus has told them time and again.
So Jesus takes the time to give them this parable — to explain exactly what's going to happen.
To understand why this parable would have hit these people so hard, you need a little background. A few decades before this, Herod the Great died and tried to pass his kingdom to his children. He could pass the land, but he couldn't pass the title of king — that belonged to Rome. One of his sons wanted that title badly enough that he traveled all the way to Rome to beg Caesar for it.
But the people of Palestine sent 50 representatives to Caesar as well, saying: don't give this man the title. He's been oppressing us. He's been killing us. When those 50 arrived in Rome, they found about 10,000 Jews already living there who joined the protest. Caesar heard the crowd and sent Herod's son home without the title.
Every person listening to Jesus that day knew that story. And Jesus is playing on it. A nobleman goes to a far country to receive a kingdom. His citizens send a message after him: we will not have this man to reign over us. The crowd would have felt that immediately.
But here's the difference: unlike Herod's son, this king gets his kingdom. And when he comes back, he settles accounts.
The main shape of the parable is this: the kingdom is not coming right away. There's going to be a delay while the king goes to a far country to receive his kingdom. While he's gone, he leaves his servants something to do. When he returns as king, he judges his servants for what they did with what he left them — and then he judges his rejecters.
Jesus is obviously the king. He was not going to set up His kingdom at the time these people expected. He was going to go away — to heaven — for a long time. While He's gone He's given His servants something to do, told them to occupy till He comes. That phrase means to keep doing business — to keep trading, keep investing, keep working what He left with you until He gets back.
This parable describes exactly the state we're in right now. We are waiting for King Jesus to come back. He's gone into a far country and we are either His servants or His rejecters. When He comes back there will be two judgments — one for His servants, one for His rejecters.
But while there are two judgments, there are three possibilities. Because the parable shows us two kinds of servants:
You are a faithful servant.
You are a faithless servant.
You are not a servant at all — you have rejected the king.
That's it. There's not a fourth group. Everybody I'm talking to right now is in one of these three: faithful, faithless, or flat-out rejected Christ.
And this parable tells us where the train is headed for all three.
So let's pray and we'll walk through them.
[PRAY]
The first two groups in Jesus' parable are servants. When the king goes away, he gives each of his ten servants what the King James calls a pound. The Greek word is mina — so this is sometimes called the Parable of the Pounds or the Parable of the Minas.
A mina was about three months' wages for a skilled laborer. So let's call it $15,000.
Notice that every single servant gets the same amount. One mina each. That's different from Matthew 25 where one gets five talents, one gets two, one gets one. Here everybody gets the same investment.
Most of the commentaries I read believe this represents the gospel. And I think that's right — because the gospel is the one thing every Christian receives equally, the one thing we are commanded to invest in others, and the one thing that multiplies when it is shared.
The master's command was plain: Occupy till I come. Take this investment. Do something with it. I want you to trade, I want you to put it to work, I want to come back and find it has grown. Then he leaves — presumably for a long time.
Now verse 14 introduces the second group: "But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us."
Notice it doesn't say his servants hated him. It says his citizens. There is a whole separate group here — people who were never servants, who simply rejected the king.
The king comes back in verse 15 having received his kingdom. Unlike Herod's son, he got what he went for. And the first thing he does is call his servants to account. He wants to know what every man has done with the money he left with them.
And this is where we see the three possibilities play out.
1. A Faithful Servant
Let's look at what a faithful servant looks like.
The first servant comes forward. The master asks what he's done. He says: Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds. A 1,000% return. The king says: well done, good servant. Because you've been faithful with this little thing I gave you, I'm making you ruler over ten cities.
The second servant comes. Same question. He says: thy pound hath gained five pounds. The king says the same thing: good servant. You get five cities.
Now there are a couple of things here worth noting about what it means to be a faithful servant.
First, what God has given us has amazing multiplying power.
Notice that neither of these servants said "I have gained ten pounds" or "I have gained five pounds." They said, "Thy pound hath gained." They understood that the power wasn't in them. The power was in what they'd been given.
The gospel has the power of God behind it.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. — Romans 1:16
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. — 1 Corinthians 1:18
If you are a Christian today, you've been saved by grace and entrusted not just as a beneficiary of the gospel but as a steward of it. How you steward it means everything.
Many years ago Rural King, where I work, sold stock to its employees. It's a private company and had never done anything like this before. I know of at least one employee who got the biggest loan he could and put it all in. A few years later they bought the stock back at a massive gain. That man became a multi-millionaire overnight because he believed in the investment enough to go all in.
There is no stock that pays a bigger return than the gospel. When we faithfully invest our lives in it, it is going to be amazing what God does.
Second, faithfulness with what God has given us now results in more responsibility in His coming kingdom.
The servant who turned one mina into ten got to rule ten cities. The one who turned one into five got five cities. Now that's not how investment works in the real world. My brother Jay is a financial advisor in Knoxville — he was just promoted to manage the whole region. You know what he doesn't get to do? Rule cities. Jay has not become the mayor of any towns that I'm aware of.
But in God's economy, faithfulness with the little things now becomes eternal responsibility in His kingdom. If you are faithful to live a gospel-centered life now, when Jesus comes back you will get to lead and rule with Him.
What does that faithfulness look like? It means having the conversation with your neighbor you've been putting off. It means showing up to serve even when you'd rather sit it out. It means asking yourself: if someone looked at my calendar and my bank account, would they see someone who actually believes the gospel is the most powerful investment in the universe?
Because here's the thing — an investment that costs you nothing is just a mina sitting in a napkin.
And that brings us to the second kind of person in this story.
2. An Unfaithful Servant
Let’s take the time to read verses 21-24 again:
[20] And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin:
[21] For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow.
[22] And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow:
[23] Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?
[24] And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.
Luke 19:20-24 (KJV)
After these first two servants receive their amazing rewards, the third servant comes and it's a different story. Remember the new king gave the command to "occupy till I come," to take this investment and invest it, to do something with it. This third servant disobeyed that command. He took the investment, the mina, the pound, and he wrapped it up in a napkin and buried it.
It's important for us to understand this is a servant. He calls the master "Lord." He's just an unfaithful servant. A disobedient servant. A servant who takes this amazing gift that he's been given and buries it.
Why did he do that? Well he tells us why he did it. He did it because he had a skewed view of his master. He had a theology, and it was just a wrong theology. He saw the master as a crook. He saw the master as a taker. He probably thought, "Hey if I do this thing, if I invest this pound, I'm not going to get anything out of it. The master is going to take all the profit and I'm gonna get nothing besides lost time."
He saw the Master as an austere man, a harsh man, a robbing man. And so the Master said, "I'm going to act that way to you. I'm going to judge you by your own words."
I think it's also apparent that he had a skewed view of the pound. The other guys, the faithful guys, saw the value in what was given to them. This man takes it and buries it because it's nothing to him.
He doesn't understand who he's working for. He doesn't understand the value of what's been given to him, and he doesn't understand the opportunity that's been given to him. He completely blows it by being unfaithful and disobedient.
Church, this is obviously a picture of the Christian who is a genuine Christian, a genuine servant of the Lord, but decides to do nothing with that gift that's been given to them. Nothing with the gospel that's been entrusted to them.
This is the Christian who maybe comes to church on Sunday once in a while, but it is by no means a priority.
This is the Christian who maybe pays reluctant lip service to Christ, but it doesn’t play a major factor in His life.
This is the Christian who does as little as he possibly can to stand out as a Christian. Whose co-workers would be surprised that he's a Christian.
This is a Christian whose mentality is that they're going to get as much as they can for themselves now because they don't trust God to reward them for faithfulness.
And that's really what it comes down to. The reason why unfaithful servants of the Lord are unfaithful servants of the Lord is because they don't trust God. They think God is out to get them. They think God is trying to take something away from them. That is the root of all sin.
Go back to the Garden of Eden. What lie did the devil convince Eve of? It was that God was holding out on them, that God was trying to trick them. When you believe that about God, who loves you so much, who sent his only son to die for you, who wants nothing but good for you, it will end up making you an unfaithful servant.
And listen there are eternal consequences to being an unfaithful servant. Last week we went to my daughter's first sports banquet. It was an award ceremony at the end of the year for all the people that played sports at her school and she expected to get an award. She was in the running for an award. She'd worked hard.
I watched the awards get handed out and given to other people. She didn't get one. She tried to mask it. She did a pretty good job but you could see the disappointment on her face. Do you remember that experience? You ever go to graduation and it's a little bit tainted because you knew you could have done better and you watched other people get an award that you knew you could have gotten?
What happened to the unfaithful servant? This story is much worse than that. Not only was he rebuked by the master, but the one talent that he had was taken away from him and given to the guy who got 10. The people were like, "What? He's already got 10! What does he need another one for?" It's to teach us a lesson.
What we do with the gospel is everything. You know how an investment works. The earlier you get into it, the more it grows. I remember standing in front of a financial adviser and he was like, "If you had invested $1,000 when you were 18, that's better than you investing $10,000 now." I was like, "Great! Why didn't you tell me that when I was 18?"
The more you give your life to Jesus and the more you give your life to the Gospel, the more that investment is going to grow and the more blessing you will have. If you are unfaithful, God's going to take away even the thing that you have.
You are going to stand before God in judgment someday. All of us are. We are all going to give an account for how we served, for how we used the blessings that God has given to us. How we live our life is going to determine what our eternity is like.
I've told you there are three groups of people in this story and so far we've just covered two. We've covered servants, faithful servants and unfaithful servants. If you remember from the parable, there's actually a third group: the citizens who sent a letter saying, "We will not have this man reign over us." The parable actually ends with the new king taking care of that third group.
So we've talked about the faithful servants. We've talked about unfaithful servants. The third group is...
3. Flat-out rejectors
This parable ends in verse 27 with this warning:
[27] But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.
Luke 19:27 (KJV)
The people in the beginning of the story who wrote and said “We don’t want this man to be our king” are called Jesus’ enemies and they get a very different kind of judgment than the servants get.
The unfaithful servant get’s his pound taken away. But those who flat out reject and refuse the king are slain. They are executed as traitors to the king.
The Bible tells us about this judgment in Revelation 20. Turn there with me. Let’s read verses 11-15:
[11] And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
[12] And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
[13] And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
[14] And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
[15] And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
Revelation 20:11-15 (KJV)
Listen Church, there are only three groups of people:
There are saved, faithful servants of Jesus who are going to receive everlasting rewards.
There are saved, unfaithful and disobedient servants of Jesus who are going to be greatly disappointed and exposed when they stand before God.
There is a third group: those who refuse Jesus, who reject Jesus. And those people are going to be judged with eternal fire. With Second Death.
The scary thing today is it's possible that you could be in this third group and not even know it. Because this third group is the default. This third group is where all of us naturally are until we come to faith in Christ.
The good news is that you don't have to stay in the third group. You can have your name found in the Book of Life. Turn over two chapters to Revelation 22, the very last chapter in the whole Bible. Look at verses 16 and 17.
[16] I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.
[17] And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
Revelation 22:16-17 (KJV)
You don't have to stay in the third group because Jesus is saying to you, "Come, come and take the water of life freely." Jesus paid the debt for your sin. He made a way for you to move from being a rejecter of Christ to being one of His faithful people. He went to the cross; He paid the debt for your sin. And he says, "Come."
But if you don't come, if you refuse Jesus, you will be judged for it.
Conclusion
This is a powerful parable because it tells us where we're at. Every one of us is living one of three stories with one of three endings.
If you have rejected Christ, then you are a flat-out rejecter. You are going to stand before the King. He will be the King. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. You, as a rejecter of Christ, will be judged with everlasting judgment.
If you have trusted Christ but not been serious about the investment he's made in you, if you've been an unfaithful servant, you too are going to stand before the King. Your unfaithfulness is going to be revealed and you will be greatly disappointed.
But if you have trusted Christ and you have taken the gospel investment He's made in you seriously, then you will stand before the King one day. You will hear, "Well done good and faithful servant." Your faithfulness will be rewarded in ways that you can't even imagine.
So which are you today? What track are you on? Are you on the faithful servant track, the unfaithful servant track, or the flat-out rejecter track?
The good news is that it doesn't matter how far along you are. You can change. If you've rejected Christ, He's still saying come. If you've been unfaithful thus far, you can change that today.
I don't know which group you're in this morning. But you do. And Jesus does. The same king who is coming to judge is the one who right now is still saying come. Don't leave here without settling which story is yours.
