Risking the Gold for Salvation.

March 18, 2007

Good Morning:

Last week in Sunday school the children were learning about the parable of the master, his servants and the ten coins from the Gospel of Luke.  Now if you have ever read the parable in Luke 11 you know that a lord was going off to receive a kingdom in a distant land.  He was going to return to his home however, and he decided to test his servants’ loyalty and shrewdness so he left a single gold coin with each of ten servants.  Nine out of the ten servants took the gold coin and invested it somehow and received a good return on their investment.  The tenth servant, thought about his charge and how his master was very stern and decided to be safe so he hid the gold coin in a linen cloth to protect it.  One day the lord returned from his journey and called his servants to him, to demand an accounting of them.  The nine servants came forth first and gave the master back his gold coin plus his earnings.  One servant was able to produce 10 coins for his master.  The tenth servant proudly brought forth the lord’s original gold coin carefully wrapped in the linen cloth.  The lord was wroth with this servant for failing to invest the coin and make a profit from it.  He ordered the coin taken from the servant and given to the servant with the 10 coins instead.

Now the servant tries to defend himself by claiming that the lord was a hard man, reaping where he doesn’t sow and gathering’ up what he didn’t plant.  Another words the lord would expect his servants to do the work that would result in increase for the lord.  The lord would sit back in watch the progress and then swoop in and collect the profit.  Thus the servant was afraid that if something went wrong and he lost the money by investing it with someone who might not pay him back, the lord would punish him severely.  So he hid the money in a safe place, probably wishing he had never received it at all, and waited desperately for the lord to return and reclaim the money so he could be free from its burden.  Why was the lord so mad then?  Wasn’t this servant worried about the safety of his lord’s wealth?  What kind of loyal servant would he be if he risked using his lord’s money to invest in someone who might not pay it back?

I can still remember when I a kid and I heard this story for the first time.  I was so shocked when I heard that the lord was mad at the tenth servant.  I had been sitting there listening thinking, those first nine guys were going to get it for risking their lord’s money.  What if they hadn’t been able to get it back?  Then to hear the preacher announce that they were the righteous ones and the tenth guy was so wrong eh had become useless to the lord.  This guy lost everything.  I was horrified by such an ending.  How could anyone be so selfish as this lord?  But then I was a babe.  I simply wasn’t spiritually matured enough to take the bread of truth.  The lord seemed like such and unjust individual to me, until I grew up and matured in my faith enough to realize that the lord in this story was God and that tenth servant was I. 

How many of you ever think of yourself as that tenth servant?  See God gives us of his wealth everyday and he expects us to invest it wisely.  He demands we bring back new rewards from his investment.  Is God to harsh or is God unkind?  No God wants us to learn from these exercises how his eternal family works, so we can be effective members of it.  There is nothing you worked your little fingers to the bones for that is yours.  No not that new car, or new dress, or money tucked away in a shoebox.  It is all God’s just like the coins in the parable.  Because just like the servants in the parable belong to their lord, we belong to God and everything we have is his already. 

One of the children in Sunday school asked me why is the story talking about money; they said God doesn’t need money does he.  I think Yeshua (Jesus) spoke about money in the parable because it something that so many “would be believers” have such a hard time investing in God’s work.  Sure, sure, we all put a little in the collection plate each week and then of course deduct it from our income taxes.  Right?  We feel that we gave something we worked hard for to God and his people to do his work.  But you know that money in your wallet, that balance in your checkbook, and that little stash down in the closet.  It isn’t yours at all it belongs to God, every last penny of it.  You didn’t earn it; it was given to you as a gift, as an opportunity to show God what you’re made of.  It’s pretty easy to invest those extra clothes, or a few cans of food to God’s children who are in need.  Oh but when it comes to those green backs, man I slaved for those and if I invest them in the Lord’s name, what happens if I don’t get them back?  But isn’t that really God’s problem, it is his money anyway isn’t it?  Your job is to make the investment in God’s work at home, across the street, and around your neighborhood.  Just think if everyone did, as God wanted us to with the gifts of wealth he entrusts us with, how much profit of love and faith would be returned every year.

We are all given sums of wealth to invest on God’s behalf.  Many of us, a lot of us, are given stashes of money, but some of us are given things more precious then gold.  We are given love, trust, admiration, devotion/loyalty, and faithfulness.  Money comes and goes.  God always makes sure his believers have what they truly need, even if servant number 10 is there to invest in them.  But God is looking for that profit from his investments.  Just like the lord in the parable God will be wroth at anyone who sits on and hides any of his gifts to us, as if they owned it themselves.  He tests each of us with money, love, kindness, family, friends, and all the things we often think of as ours.  He wants to see if we love him more or the wealth more.  He is testing to see do we really trust him to risk the little we have or are we going to hide it in the closet because we may not get it back.

The interesting ending to this story is what happened with some of the children the following week.  Our family had to go on some appointments in a distant city and we took the children with us.  Each of them had dug into their secret stash of funds that the kept hidden away in their room and brought their own money to spend on the family to invest in having a wonderful time together.  It was interesting that the children got the moral of the story so well, so quickly, when there is a world full of adults who go on obliviously to eternal doom they create for themselves because they can’t drink the sweet milk of the God’s truth like little children. 

The true investment for each of us is in heaven by doing God’s work here on earth where God holds it for us, not in the bank or the shoebox in the closet.  Where are your investments being made?

Amen.