Matthew 25:24

What Is Your Talent?

He also that had received the one talent. Matthew 25:24.

This is a sermon for the boys and girls who don't sit at the top of their class in school and are quite sure that they never will sit there. That is just another way of saying that this is a sermon for “one talent” boys and girls. Who are they? They are the boys and girls who often think it isn't worth while trying to do the best they can because they haven't so many brains as some of their classmates and companions. They excuse themselves from doing anything because they can't do everything. It is a grand excuse for laziness, and it is as old as the story of today's text and older. It is as old as the world itself.

Did you ever wonder why clever people are called “talented”? The reason is exactly as old as today's story. Christ told a tale about a certain great man who was leaving the country for some time and who gave to his servants before he left certain sums of money, telling them to trade with them in his absence. The first was given five talents, the second two, the third one. You know what happened in the end of the day. When, after a long time, the great man returned, he called these servants to him and asked them what they had done with the money. The five talent man had gained other five talents, the two talent man had added two to his two, but the one talent man brought his one talent back with a whining excuse that he hadn't done anything with it but bury it in the earth, because he was afraid he might lose it if he tried to use it.

Of course that story which Christ told was more than a mere interesting tale. It was a story with a deep meaning. Christ was talking in a picture or parable, and He meant that God gives to every man, woman, and child in the world certain gifts, certain abilities. He makes them able to do certain things and He expects them to use these abilities. He expects them to make the very most of them.

This story of the talents took such a hold of people's minds that gradually the picture word “talent” which meant a weight of gold equal to £240 came to be applied to the God-given gifts and abilities about which Christ was really speaking. So that today, when we speak of “a man of many talents” or of “a talented man,” we don't mean a man who owns a lot of gold but a man who is brilliantly clever and can do a great many different things exceedingly well.

Now I have a great deal of sympathy with the boys and girls who have only one talent. It is hard not to be an all-round clever person; it is most discouraging to be always adorning the foot of the class. But there is no reason why you should not make a brilliant success of life all the same. Yes, I said brilliant, and I mean brilliant. You can polish up that one talent of yours and everybody has at least one talent till it shines for all to see.

I wonder what your special talent is! Do you know it? You are not clever at grammar and history and geography, but you have a knack of getting your sums right every time, or you can read music as easily as other people read the ABC, or you can draw any given thing, or you can sing like a bird. Very well, work up these subjects till you excel in them.

Perhaps you aren't good at even math or music. But mother knows that, when you like, you can be a splendid help at home. You can cook or you can sew, or you can run errands, or you can tidy and dust and make the home comfortable and happy. Very good. Excel there.

We might go on all day just naming the talents one can have.

There is a certain famous London doctor of whom a man who was a class-fellow at the university said: “He was not what could be called a genius by any means. I should not even say he was clever. He was a one talent chap; and his talent was being able to put his bits of information in their proper place. He was methodical to a degree. Some of us have a lot to answer for. We might have done better. Give my old class-fellow an idea that was worth anything, and didn't he work at it!”

That man made the most of his talent for methodical work, and you see what he has come to. But I'll tell you a much more wonderful story.

You must all have heard of the American girl called Helen Keller. She is blind and deaf, and as a little girl she was very unhappy. She could understand nothing, not even what having a mother meant. But a wonderful teacher was sent to her, and through this teacher Helen learned about the world she could not see, about love and about God. And now she is helping people who can see by telling them in books her beautiful thoughts. She is using the talent God gave her her wonderful mind and she is using it for others.

And that brings me to the last thing I want to say to the one talent people. It is this. Use your talent for others; don't polish it up merely for your own use. Polish it so that the world may be the brighter and happier for its shining. If you use it only for yourself, you won't be doing much better than the servant who buried his talent in a field. The lord and master expected the servant to use the talent for him, and God expects us to use for Him the gifts He gives us. And the best way the only way to use them for Him is to use them for other people. Have you got the idea? To come down to everyday things. If you are good at sums help that little fellow who can't get his right. If you are good at sewing don't just make dainty decorations for yourself, give mother a hand with sewing.

Boys and girls, these are unimportant things small things, did I say? In God's sight there are no such things as small things.