377. Rewards for the Dull

Rewards for the Dull

Mat_25:15 : ’93Unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability.’94

Many of the parables of Jesus Christ were more graphic in the times in which he lived than they are now, because circumstances have so much changed. In olden times, when a man wanted to wreak a grudge upon his neighbor, after the farmer had scattered the seed-wheat over the field, and was expecting the harvest, his enemy would go across the same field with a sack full of the seed of darnel-grass, scattering that seed all over the field, and, of course, it would sprout up and spoil the whole crop; and it was to that Christ referred in the parable when he spoke of the tares being sown among the wheat. In this land our farms are fenced off, and the wolves have been driven to the mountains, and we cannot fully understand the meaning of the parable in regard to the shepherd and the lost sheep. But the parable from which I speak today is founded on something we all understand. It is built on money, and that means the same in Jerusalem as in New York. It means the same to the serf as to the czar, and to the Chinese coolie as to the emperor. Whether it is made out of bone or brass or iron or copper or gold or silver, it speaks all languages without a stammer. The parable of the text runs in this wise: The owner of a large estate was about to leave home, and he had some money that he wished properly invested; and so he called together his servants and said: ’93I am going away now, and I wish you would take this money and put it to the very best possible use; and when I come back return to me the interest.’94 To one man he gave nine thousand four hundred dollars, to others he gave lesser sums of money; to the least he gave one thousand eight hundred and eighty. He left home and was gone for years, and then returned. On his arrival he was anxious to know about his worldly affairs, and he called his servants together to report. ’93Let me know,’94 said he ’93what you have been doing with my property since I have been gone.’94 The man who had received the nine thousand four hundred dollars came up and said: ’93I invested that money. I got good interest for it. I have in other ways rightly employed it; and here are eighteen thousand eight hundred dollars. You see I have doubled what you gave me.’94 ’93That’92s very good,’94 said the owner of the estate; ’93that’92s grandly done. I admire your faithfulness and industry. I shall reward you. Well done’97well done.’94 Other servants came up with smaller accumulations. After a while, I see a man dragging himself along, with his head hanging. I know, from the way he comes in, that he is a lazy fellow. He comes up to the owner of the estate, and says: ’93Here are those one thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars.’94 ’93What!’94 says the owner of the property, ’93haven’92t you made it accumulate anything?’94 ’93Nothing’97nothing.’94 ’93Why, what have you been about all these years?’94 ’93Oh, I was afraid that if I invested it I might somehow lose it. There are your one thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars.’94 Many a man started out with only a crown in his pocket, and achieved a fortune; but this man of my text, with one thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars, has gained not a farthing. Instead of confessing his indolence, he goes to work to berate his master’97for indolence is nearly always impudent and impertinent. Of course he loses his place, and is discharged from the service.

The owner who went out into a far country is Jesus Christ going from earth to heaven. The servants spoken of in the text are members of the church. The talents are our different qualifications of usefulness given in different proportions to different people. The coming back of the owner is the Lord Jesus returning at the Judgment to make final settlement. The raising of some of these men to be rulers over five or two cities is the exaltation of the righteous at the last day, while the casting out of the idler is the expulsion of all those who have neglected to improve their privileges.

Learn first, from this subject, that becoming a Christian is merely going out to service. If you have any romantic idea about becoming a Christian, I want now to scatter the romance. If you enter into the kingdom of God, it will be going into plain, practical, honest, continuous, persistent Christian work. I know there are a great many people who have fantastic and romantic notions about this Christian life, but he who serves God with all the energies of body, mind, and soul is a worthy servant, and he who does not is an unworthy servant. When the war-trumpet sounds, all the Lord’92s soldiers must march, however deep the snow may be, or however fearful the odds against them. Under our Government we may have colonels and captains and generals in time of peace, but in the Church of God there is no peace until the last great victory shall have been achieved. But it is a voluntary service. People are not brought into it as slaves were brought from Africa. A young man goes to an artisan, and says: ’93Sir, I want to learn your trade. I by this indenture yield myself to your care and service for the next four or five or seven years. I want you to be my master, and I want to be your servant.’94 Just so, if we come into the kingdom of God at all, we must come, saying to Christ: ’93Be thou my Master. I take thy service for time and for eternity. I choose it.’94 You see it is a voluntary service. There is no drudgery in it. In our worldly callings, sometimes our nerves get worn out, and our head aches, and our physical faculties break down; but in this service of the Lord Jesus, the harder a man works the better he likes it, and he who has been for forty years serving God enjoys the employment better than when he first entered it. The grandest honor that can ever be bestowed upon you is to have Christ say to you on the last day: ’93Well done, good and faithful servant!’94

Learn also from this parable that different qualifications are given to different people. The teacher lifts a blackboard, and he draws a diagram, in order that by that diagram he may impress the mind of the pupil with the truth that he has been uttering. And all the truths of this Bible are drawn out in the natural world as in a great diagram. Here is an acre of ground that has ten talents. Under a little cultivation, it yields twenty bushels of wheat to the acre. Here is another piece of ground that has only one talent. You may plow it, and harrow it, and cultivate it year after year, but it yields a mere pittance. So here is a man with ten talents in the way of getting good and doing good. He soon, under Christian culture, yields great harvests of faith and good works. Here is another man who seems to have only one talent, and you may put upon him the greatest spiritual culture, but he yields only a little of the fruits of righteousness. You are to understand that there are different qualifications for different individuals. There is a great deal of ruinous comparison when a man says: ’93Oh, if I only had that man’92s faith, or that man’92s money, or that man’92s eloquence, how I would serve God!’94 Better take the faculty that God has given you and employ it in the right way. The rabbis used to say, that before the stone and timber were brought to Jerusalem for the temple, every stone and piece of timber was marked; so that before they started for Jerusalem the architects knew in what place that particular piece of timber or stone should fit. And so I have to tell you we are all marked for some one place in the great temple of the Lord, and do not let us complain, saying: ’93I would like to be the foundation-stone, or the cap-stone.’94 Let us go into the very place where God intends us to be, and be satisfied with the position. Your talent may be in personal appearance; your talent may be in large worldly estate; your talent may be in high social position; your talent may be in a swift pen or eloquent tongue; but whatever be the talent, it has been given only for one purpose’97practical use.

You sometimes find a man in the community of whom you say: ’93He has no talent at all;’94 and yet that man may have a hundred talents. His one hundred talents may be shown in the item of endurance. Poverty comes, and he endures it; persecution comes, and he endures it; sickness comes, and he endures it. Before men and angels he is a specimen of Christian patience, and he is really illustrating the power of Christ’92s Gospel, and is doing as much for the church, and more for the church, than many more positively active. If you have one talent, use that; if you have ten talents, use them, satisfied with the fact that we all have different qualifications, and that the Lord decides whether we shall have one or whether we shall have ten.

I learn also from this parable that the grace of God was intended to be accumulative. When God plants an acorn, he means an oak; and when he plants a small amount of grace in the heart, he intends it to be growthful, and enlarge until it overshadows the whole nature. There are parents who, at the birth of each child, lay aside a certain amount of money, investing it, expecting, by accumulation and by compound interest, that by the time the child shall come to mid-life this small amount of money will be a fortune, showing how a small amount of money will roll up into a vast accumulation. Well, God sets aside a certain amount of grace for each one of his spiritual children at his birth, and it is to go on, and, as by compound interest, accumulate, until it shall become an eternal fortune. Can it be possible that you have been acquainted with the Lord Jesus for ten, twenty, thirty years, and that you do not love him more now than you ever did before? Can it be that you have been cultured in the Lord’92s vineyard, and that Christ finds on you nothing but sour grapes? You may depend upon it, if you do not use the talent that God gave you, it will dwindle. The rill that breaks from the hillside will either widen into a river or dry up. The brightest day started in the dim twilight. The strongest Christian man was once a weak Christian. Take the one talent, and make it two; take five, and make them ten; take ten and make them twenty. The grace of God was intended to be very accumulative.

Again: I learn that inferiority of gifts is no excuse for indolence. This man, with the smallest amount of money, came whining into the presence of the owner of the estate, as much as to say: ’93If you had given me nine thousand four hundred dollars I would have brought eighteen thousand eight hundred dollars as well as this other man. You gave me only one thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars, and I hardly thought it was worth while to use it at all. So I hid it in a napkin, and it produced no result. It’92s because you did not give me enough.’94 But inferiority of faculties is no excuse for indolence. Let me say to the man who has the least qualifications, by the grace of God he may be made mightily effective. The merchant whose cargoes come out from every island of the sea, and who, by one stroke of the pen, can change the whole face of American commerce, has not so much power as you may have before God in earnest, faithful, and continuous prayer. You say you have no faculty. Do you not understand that you might this afternoon go into your place of prayer and kneel before God, and bring down upon your soul, and the souls of others, a blessing so vast that it would take eternal ages to compute it? ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93I have no fluency of speech. I cannot talk well, I cannot utter what I want to say.’94 My brother, can you not quote one passage of Scripture? Then, take that one passage of Scripture; carry it with you everywhere; quote it under all proper circumstances. With that one passage of Scripture you may harvest a hundred souls for God. I am glad that the chief work of the church is being done by the men of one talent. Once in a while, when a great fortress is to be taken, God will bring out a great field-piece and rake all with the fiery hail of destruction. But common muskets do most of the hard fighting. It took only one Joshua, and the thousands of common troops under him, to drive down the walls of cities, and, under wrathful strokes, to make nations fly in terror before him. It only took one Luther for Germany, one Zwinglius for Switzerland, one Calvin for France, and one John Wesley for England. Dorcas as certainly has a mission to serve as Paul has a mission to preach. The two mites dropped by the widow into the poor box will be as much applauded as the endowment of a college, which puts a man’92s name into all the newspapers. The man who kindled the fire under the burnt offering in the ancient temple had a duty as imperative as that of the high priest, in magnificent robes, walking into the Holy of Holies under the cloud of Jehovah’92s presence. Yes, the men with one talent are to save the world, or it will never be saved at all. The men with five or ten talents are tempted to toil chiefly for themselves, to build up their own great name, and work for their own aggrandizement, and do nothing for the alleviation of the world’92s woes. The cedar of Lebanon standing on the mountain seems to hand down the storms out of the heavens to the earth, but it bears no fruit, while some dwarf pear-tree has more fruit on its branches than it can carry. Better to have one talent and put it to full use than five hundred wickedly neglected.

My subject teaches me there is coming a day of solemn settlement. When the old farmer of the text arrived at home, he called all the servants about him, and said: ’93Here is the little account I have been keeping. I want to see your account, and we will first compare them; and I will pay you what I owe you, and you will pay me what you owe me. Let us have a settlement.’94 The day will come when the Lord Jesus Christ will appear, and will say to you: ’93What have you been doing with my property? What have you been doing with the faculties entrusted? What have you been doing with what I gave you for accumulative purposes?’94 There will be no escape from that settlement. Sometimes you cannot get a settlement with a man, especially if he owes you. He postpones and procrastinates, and says: ’93I will see you next week,’94 or ’93I will see you next month.’94 The fact is he does not want to settle. But when the great day comes of which I am speaking, there will be no escape. We will have to face all the bills.

I have sometimes been amazed to see how an accountant will run up or down a long line of figures. If I see twenty or thirty figures in a line, and I attempt to add them up, and I add them two or three times, I make them different each time. But I have admired the way an accountant will take a long line of figures, and without a single mistake, and with great celerity, announce the aggregate. Now, in the last great settlement, there will be a correct account presented. God has kept a long line of sins, a long line of broken Sabbaths, a long line of profane words, a long line of neglected sacraments, a long line of misimproved privileges. They will all be added up, and before angels and devils and men the aggregate will be announced. That will be the great day of settlement! I have to ask the question: ’93Am I ready for it?’94 It is of more importance to me to answer that question in regard to myself than in regard to you; and it is of more importance for you to answer it in regard to yourself than in regard to me. Every man for himself in that day. Every woman for herself in that day. ’93If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.’94 We are apt to speak of the last day as an occasion of vociferation’97a great demonstration of power and pomp; but there will be on that day, I think, a few moments of entire silence. I think a tremendous, an overwhelming silence; I think it will be such a silence as the earth never heard. It will be at the moment when all nations are listening for their doom.

I learn also from this parable of the text that in heaven our degrees of happiness will be graduated according to the use we made of our opportunities in this world. Several of the commentators agree in making this parable the same one as in Luke, where one man was made ruler over five cities, and another made ruler over two cities. Would it be fair and right that the professed Christian man who has lived very near the line between the world and the church’97the man who has often compromised his Christian character’97the man who has never spoken out for God’97the man who has never been known as a Christian except on communion days’97the man whose great struggle has been to see how much of the world he could get and yet win heaven’97is it right to suppose that that man will have as grand and glorious a seat in heaven as the man who gave all his energies of body, mind, and soul to the service of God? The dying thief entered heaven, but not with the same startling acclaim as that which greeted Paul, who had gone under scourgings, and across dungeons, and through maltreatments into the kingdom of glory. One star differs from another star in glory, and they who toil mightily for Christ on earth shall have a far greater reward than those who have rendered only half a service.

Some of you are hastening on toward the reward of the righteous. I want to cheer you up at the thought that there will be some kind of a reward waiting for you. There are Christian people in this house who are very near heaven. This week some of you may pass out into the light of the unsetting sun. I saw a blind man going along the road with his staff, and he kept pounding the earth and then stamping with his foot. I said to him: ’93What do you do that for?’94 ’93Oh,’94 he said, ’93I can tell by the sound of the ground when I am near a dwelling.’94 And some of you can tell by the sound of your earthly pathway that you are coming near to your father’92s house. I congratulate you. Oh, weather-beaten voyagers, the storms are driving you into the harbor! Just as when you were looking for a friend, you came up to the gate of his house, and you were talking with the servant, when your friend hoisted the window and shouted: ’93Come in! come in!’94 Just so, when you come to the gate of the future world, and you are talking with Death, the black porter at the gate, methinks Christ will hoist the window and say: ’93Come in! come in! I will make thee ruler over ten cities.’94 In anticipation of that land I do not wonder that Augustus Toplady, the author of ’93Rock of Ages,’94 declared in his last moment: ’93I have nothing more to pray for; God has given me everything. Surely no man can live on earth after the glories I have witnessed.’94 My brothers and sisters, how sweet it will be, after the long wilderness march, to get home. That was a bright moment for the tired dove in the time of the deluge, when it found its way, into the window of the ark.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage