Matthew 25:21

Matthew 25:21

Before us is a servant of Jesus Christ, and we have to consider: (1) His Character, (2) his Conduct, (3) his Reward..

I. His Character. "Good and faithful;" good, personally virtuous, and efficient as a servant. (1) A good and faithful servant accepts his position as a servant, with all that is included in that position. He is not striving for something else. (2) A good and faithful servant bears the work and burden of his servitude. He does not shirk. (3) A good and faithful servant renders service with hearty goodwill. (4) A good and faithful servant is obedient to his master. His will is in subjection. (5) A good and faithful servant has his master's interest ever before him. No eyeservice. (6) A good and faithful servant is profitable to his master.

II. The Conduct upon which this character is based. "Thou hast been faithful over a few things," over the five talents delivered to him by his master. The inner character is the source of action; the outer character is the impression made by our actions. Every man has a double character; a character within and without. A few things were given to the servant before us five talents that he might trade with them and make them more. And this was sufficient as a basis of character; it justified the words "good and faithful."

III. The Commendation and Reward. (1) This is real commendation, not a commendation of self false, deceitful, delusive; but commendation by another, without flattering or hypocrisy; not in ignorance or prejudice, but with sound judgment and perfect knowledge. (2) This is full and complete commendation, Full as to manner and spirit. Full as to source. It is a "Well done!" from Him who doeth all things well. Full as to substance and meaning. What can be added to it? And full as to influence and effect. It is a "Well done!" that will inspire the doer with will to do, and with power to do, for ever and ever. (3) This is a useful commendation. It qualifies him to whom it is addressed to do something more, something better, something higher.

S. Martin, Comfort in Trouble,p. 215.

Fidelity and Dominion.

I. All human endowment and its largest results are small, measured by the standards of God's kingdom. To the holder of the five talents, as to the holder of the two, it is said: "Thou hast been faithful over a few things." Human endowment and human performance, the few things, get their significance from their relation to the many things the great, thronging facts and principles and laws of the kingdom of God. Obedience, responsibility, duty, work, love, trust all that makes up Christian life here are sides and manifestations of the unseen spiritual universe. The man who is administering a moral trust, discharging duties, improving gifts, is within the circumference of that kingdom which spans eternity and the universe; and it is that part which gives a meaning and value to his few things.

II. Work and accomplishment, in themselves, are trivial because they do not involve mastery. Look at our Lord's words: "Good servant, thou has been faithfulover a few things, I will set thee overmany things." The word is habitually used of putting in a position of authority or mastery. Good and faithful people are constantly tempted to identify success with accomplishment, and to think that they fail because they cannot do what they set out to do. But you observe that God gives no promise of mastery for this world. He sets upon true and good work, not the seal of accomplishment, which is a thing of today, but the great moral seal of the eternal heavenly kingdom, which is faithfulness.

III. And yet the parable very clearly shows us that faithfulness is on the direct line of mastery. "Thou hast been faithful, therefore I will make thee ruler." Fidelity tends and leads up to mastery.

IV. Fidelity to the few things carries with it the promise of fidelity to the many.

V. The parable fixes our attention less upon the work than upon the worker; or, perhaps, we might better say, upon the work throughthe worker. The satisfaction of the master lies, not in the fact that his five talents have grown into ten, but in that the increase is due to his servant's faithfulness. In God's eyes the best and highest result of work is a good worker. It is faithfulness, not amount, which links the talent to the joy of the Lord, the few things to the many.

M. R. Vincent, God and Bread,p. 117.

Industry.

These are two or three reasons which make it easy for us to see this duty from a wrong point of view, and to miss its very great and sacred importance. The first is, that it is to many, perhaps to most, a very distasteful one. It is a positive, not a negative, duty; it requires you to do, not only to abstain; and it requires you to do heartily, to put some life and spirit into what you do and if the duty be against the grain this calls for a considerable effort. And again, it is a duty from whose exactions we are never free, which wakes with us in the morning, and pursues us even when we are weary at night. But there is another and a more respectable reason why we undervalue it. Our own experience tells us that there are blacker sins than idleness, and that there are more delicate and heavenly forms of goodness than industry, forms of goodness more penetrating, more rare, which more manifestly have their reward not here but in the sight of the Father in heaven. Consider some reasons for the high and sacred importance which attaches to the duty of industry, of hearty, manly activity in the daily work of life which God appoints us.

I. And first, its high importance rests on the fact that it is so plain a duty. You cannot doubt that it is a duty. What can be the meaning of the parables which speak of us all as servants set to work for a master, who will return to take account, each with talents to be used, and by using to be increased for his service, if we may grow idle and let our powers dwindle instead of growing without blame?

II. It is a duty which is the Divine remedy and safeguard against an infinite amount of evil. If you would flee from evil, fill up the empty hour, the vacant, listless mind. Be a man, set to work, look life in the face, think what you are going to do and to be. There is no time for dreaming, for tampering with forbidden thoughts, for childish follies and boyish extravagances.

III. A third and last reason. It is a duty, with a far-reaching purpose and reward. I am not speaking at this moment of the more tangible secondary purposes which all can understand. They vary to different lives. But for all these are the great moral purposes. Now is the time when, more than ever, the habits of your life must be formed. The great Taskmaster gives us our faculties to one five talents, to another two, to another only one; but the five may become one, and the one may become five. Happy is that faithful servant whom his Lord when He comes shall find honestly working at the task he set him.

E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermon,p. 67.

References: Matthew 25:21. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1541; T. Keble, Sermons from Easter to Ascension Day,pp. 108, 118; J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College,p. 301; R. Norton, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiii., p. 182; H. Allon, Ibid.,vol. xxvi., p. 17; G. Matheson, Expositor,2nd series, vol. vi., p. 204.Matthew 25:22; Matthew 25:23. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 175; S. G. Matthews, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 214.Matthew 25:23. F. W. Farrar, In the Days of Thy Youth,p. 61.