Transcript
Today I’m meeting with Zane Hodges, and we’re going to conclude our discussion of the Olivet Discourse as found in Matthew 24 and 25.
And Zane I’d like again by just briefly reviewing some of the things that we talked about last time and then have you give us a little bit of a review of the parabolic structure.
But first of all, I think it’s important to remember that when we looked at the parable of the faithful and wise servant in Matthew 24:45 till the end of the chapter, verse 51, we saw that there was a servant there who was doing very well.
He was ruling over other servants of the Lord. He was doing a good job. But then we’re told in the text that he said in his heart, “My Lord delayeth His coming.”
And this was when the mood changes dramatically, because all of a sudden he starts beating his fellow servants. He starts drinking with the drunkards. He lost the focus.
And when Jesus returns, this person gets a good tongue-lashing. He’s rebuked by Christ. And instead of being a ruler in the life to come, he’s relegated to a position of non-rulership.
And you pointed out last time that the lesson to be learned in that parable was that we need to remain watchful in this age for the imminent return of Christ. He could return at any moment.
Then we went on and we looked at Matthew 25:1 to 13 and the parable of the ten virgins. And you pointed out that this dealt with the tribulation period. That the midnight cry in the middle of that parable deals with the abomination of desolation, which takes place at the midpoint of the tribulation.
And you made an interesting point. You noted that all ten of these virgins were watchful. None of them failed to be watchful. All of them were waiting for the Lord’s return.
But you pointed out that it’s possible to be watchful and yet not be prepared. You could watch for a person to come to your house, but you know, when they arrive you haven’t prepared any food for them. You haven’t prepared for them.
And that usually pointed out five who had their torches, and their torches were burning, but they didn’t have a sufficient supply of oil to keep them burning. Those five were not prepared.
And when the others tell them to go and buy oil, you pointed out that it takes an expenditure of effort and time and prayer and then the word “be in fellowship” in order to be prepared for the Lord’s return.
And so you pointed out that we can learn from the parable of the ten virgins that not only are we to be watchful, but within the watchfulness we also need to be prepared.
Now would you like to make a few more comments on that and also just give us a review of the parabolic structure? Because we’re going to move in now to the talents and the judgment of the sheep and the goats.
Well, Bob, you’ve I think nicely covered the basic lessons that we saw in the first two parables that conclude the Olivet Discourse.
And maybe just a word about the structure here at the end of the discourse. As we know, there are actually four parables that conclude the Olivet Discourse.
And for our purposes today I’d like to label them as A1 and B1 and then A2 and B2. A1 of course is the parable of the faithful or unfaithful servant. B1 is the parable about the ten virgins.
A2 is the parable about the talents. And B2 is the parable of, or a quasi-parable about, the judging of the sheep and the goats.
Now it seems to me that A1 and B1 belong together in the sense that both of them focus on the second advent and being watchful and ready for that second advent.
And the statement that is made in 25:13, Watch therefore for you do not know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man comes, is a kind of a conclusion to this particular unit.
Watch therefore for you do not know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man comes
So both of these are what we might call advent parables with the focus upon the arrival of the Son of Man, of course with implications of what follows, but nevertheless the focus is on His actual arrival.
However A2 and B2 are what we might call accountability parables in the sense that they focus upon the judgments that follow the second advent.
And as we pointed out last time, as you’ve sort of indicated in your review, A1 the parable about the faithful or unfaithful servant deals with somebody waiting for the beginning of the second advent or in other words somebody in the church age.
And B1 deals with people who live through the tribulation. Now in the same way we can say that A2 is concerned with the accountability of people who have lived up until the beginning of the second advent.
And B2 is the accountability of those who live through the tribulation period when the Lord then comes and executes the judgment of the sheep and the goats.
I think that shows a very carefully structured and balanced presentation: two advent parables, two accountability parables.
The first member of each of these pairs deals with people of this age, and the second member of each of these pairs deals with people who pass through the tribulation.
So this is the way in which our Lord has structured His discourse, and it helps us I think to work with the discourse to recognize that structure.
Okay, very good. That is very helpful. So two on the advent and two on accountability. Okay, that does excellent.
Now let’s discuss the parable of the talents, which is the first of the two accountability parables. And I’ve got a number of questions, but first of all how about just giving a brief summary of what’s going on in this parable.
Obviously in this parable, Bob, the master who is going abroad is committing a significant responsibility given in monetary terms to the servants he leaves behind.
And in this particular parable each servant is given his responsibility in accordance with his ability. So one of them is given five talents, one is given two talents, and one is given one talent.
And then of course the parable focuses on the assessment of the performance of these servants after the master returns.
And of course in the first two cases the individuals have maximized the responsibility they’ve been given. So the five-talent man now has ten talents to present. The two-talent man has four talents to present.
And the final talent man has been too timid to do anything and has wrapped his opportunity up in a napkin and simply brings what he started with.
And the first two are rewarded very much in the same language: Well done, you good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many. Enter into the joy of your Lord.
Is something that is said to both the first two men, even if the first man brings more money, right? He had more money to start with.
And so the Lord evaluates their performance as equal. But the third man rather is the man who fails to do anything. And he is the man who loses the privileges and the commendation that he gives to the faithful servants.
Okay, that raises quite a few questions. Thank you for the overview. You already touched on this a little, but I could use a little more discussion.
Why is it that the person who starts with five and ends up with ten gets the same commendation and apparently the same reward as the one who goes from two to four?
It would seem like the one who goes from five to ten you’d have more authority in the life to come than the one who goes from two to four. But yet that doesn’t seem to, except for later on.
We’ll talk in a minute about the little bonus at the end from the one who has ten. But except for that it seems like they’re getting the same.
That’s right. And I think the lesson that is involved here is that each of these first two servants does the same thing with the amount that he is given.
The first man doubles his money, and the second man doubles his money. So from the Lord’s standpoint, and especially since these original commitments are based on the individual’s ability, from the Lord’s standpoint they’ve both done equally.
And the way I would illustrate this is the difference, let’s say, between a world-famous evangelist who maximizes the opportunity God gives to him and a little washerwoman who spends her life scrubbing floors and pinching pennies and sending off everything she can to the mission fields.
She may maximize her opportunity in exactly the same measure and degree as the world-famous evangelist maximizes his.
So we should never I think feel particularly inferior to other people because maybe the Lord hasn’t given me the gift that I so much admire in some other servant of His.
Because if I am faithful with the gift that I am given, if I maximize the opportunity God has given me in terms of my ability, then my reward will be the same as someone who has traveled the world and maximized his.
In some ways one would almost think that a man with a large amount of ability is called upon to make special efforts in order to maximize that ability.
I would think it’s a little bit harder in some ways to preach worldwide and not to succumb to the temptations of that but to maximize the opportunity that it is to labor in obscurity and maximize it.
But in any case God treats His servants fairly, and He measures what we’ve done on the basis of what He’s given us.
So I mean we’re getting ahead of ourselves a bit, but in terms of application this passage would be saying it’s really not appropriate to be comparing ourselves with others and saying, “Woe is me. I’ve not been given all this. I’m just to do the best I can with what God has given me and don’t worry about what other people are doing.”
That’s exactly right. Kind of like the case where Jesus predicts to Peter the death of John or his own death I should say, and then Peter said, “Well what about this man?”
And Jesus says, “You know that’s none of your business. Why do you care about that? Follow me.”
And I think that’s the basic lesson here. We are tempted to be jealous if somebody has more ability to do more for God. But that’s none of our business. That’s the Lord’s business.
And my business is to follow him and maximize my potential.
That’s fantastic. Well let me ask you another question related to the third servant.
As you know most commentators take the third servant here as an unbeliever who is being condemned eternally by Christ at the great white throne judgment.
But there’s good reason also to believe that this person is a believer who is, along with the first two servants, being evaluated at the judgment seat of Christ or Greek the Bema.
And that this is an evaluation to determine his reward in the life to come not condemnation. So which is it? What do you believe this context is talking about? Is this person a believer who’s rebuked or an unbeliever who’s condemned?
Well it has always seemed to me that the idea that the third servant is an unbeliever is a totally gratuitous suggestion about the text.
Because right up front all three of these men have exactly the same relationship to their master. All three of them are identified as his servants. All three are given responsibilities.
And if we identify the responsibility first two as a Christian responsibility, what in the world is the responsibility given to the third servant?
So I think it’s fairly obvious that there are no grounds really within the text itself for coming to the conclusion that the third servant is not a regenerate man.
He is in fact a servant of Christ who is called to account at the same time that the other men are called to account, which would be the judgment seat of Christ.
By the way, it is not called to account a thousand years later at the great white throne. So all of this is a totally gratuitous reading into the text.
But what is important to remember here is that the story is parabolic. And that what he receives is the opposite of what the others do receive.
They receive commendation. They receive new authority. And they receive participation in the joy of their Lord. Also precisely the three things that are denied to him.
Instead of commendation he gets rebuked. Instead of additional authority he loses the opportunity that he has. And he is excluded from the joy of his Lord.
That is not to be understood in some kind of universalistic framework that the unfaithful Christian has no joys in the future. That would be contrary to lots and lots of other scriptures.
But there are special joys which obviously the Lord Jesus Christ shares with His faithful servants. And these are admitted only faithful servants are admitted to those, and unfaithful servants are excluded.
Okay, very good. I’d like to read the end of the parable. That’s verses 29 and 30.
And then I’d like you to comment on the outer darkness. Now we’re going to have a whole session on the outer darkness next time, so maybe you could just give a brief overview of it and then we’ll come back and talk about verse 29 in a minute.
But let me read the verses 29 and 30 of Matthew 25: For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance. But from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance. But from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
As I said we’ll spend a whole session next time looking at the three places in Matthew chapter 8, chapter 22, and here. But could you give a brief comment? You’ve already alluded to it slightly. As this relates to the absence of the joy, but of what this outer darkness and the weeping and gnashing of teeth is.
Okay, that’s a very good question. And one of the things I always like to point out here is that when people come to the phrase “outer darkness” they tend to forget all about the parabolic nature of the parable itself.
So here’s a servant who has a talent wrapped up in a napkin. There’s no literal talent. There’s no literal napkin.
And he is stripped of the talent and it is given to the man who has ten talents. There’s no exchange of talents at the judgment seat. All of this is parabolic, right?
But then when we get to the outer darkness we suddenly jump the track and this is supposed to be literal.
And it would be much better to keep within the framework of the parable and understand this as figurative.
And when we do get to the overall discussion of the outer darkness I think what we’re going to conclude is that it is in fact a figure.
There’s no such thing as a literal dark spot to which unfaithful servants will be sent. This is all part of a parabolic apparatus that Jesus has expounded in Matthew.
I could not get too far ahead of us, but in Matthew 22 the image is more fully fleshed out in terms of a wedding supper which was customarily held at night.
And an individual arrives at the wedding supper without the proper garment. He’s tied up, hands and feet, and cast into the darkness outside, which means he’s put out of the brightly lighted banqueting hall and put out on the grounds.
Now the parable does not say there’s some torturers out there who inflict on him being torture on this poor guy that’s tied up hands and feet.
All of this is parabolic because nobody believes that even the lost are going to be tied up hands and feet, right?
What this means is that the man’s activities are restricted and he is excluded from the brightly lighted banqueting hall where there’s joy and festivity.
So that gives us the background for the Lord’s statement here: “Enter thou into the joy of your Lord,” or rather they cast them into the outer darkness.
This man, the faithful man, is admitted to fellowship with our Lord, special joys inside the banqueting hall so to speak. And the unfaithful servant is excluded from these.
This is not to be understood as hell or anything like that. And the weeping and gnashing of teeth is obviously an expression of extreme remorse on the part of the servant who now realizes what he has lost by not being diligent in serving his master.
We need to keep in mind again as we did I think as we discussed this idea in connection with the first parable A1 that in the Orient extreme expressions of grief are very natural.
They may not be as natural to us in the West, but it would be quite unsurprising for a man who has lost his beloved wife to weep and gnash his teeth.
So there’s nothing about the phraseology itself that belongs only in the context of hell. And the context here is clearly that of a servant who stayed with his master and who is excluded from very significant privilege.
And as a result he’s very, very, very sorry for this. This does not say there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth forever and forever and forever.
But it would be very strange indeed if we imagine the judgment seat of Christ is a serious encounter between ourselves and the Lord Jesus Christ if he has to tell me at the judgment seat of Christ, “I cannot admit you to these privileges and to these rewards.”
It would be very strange if we didn’t weep over that. It would be even stranger because when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ we will be perfect. We will be capable of the shame and regret that we are not now capable of because of our sinful nature.
We’ll be standing there with purified natures. And it would be very appropriate for a holy transformed man who looks back on a life that has been significantly wasted. It would be very natural for him to weep and mourn severely.
And I think that’s what the Lord has in mind here.
And you’ve already implied that it would also be expected for a person with a glorified body and with no sin nature to also bounce back from this weeping and gnashing of teeth rather quickly.
In other words we don’t anticipate this person weeping and gnashing their teeth for the thousand years of the millennium for example. We would expect pretty quickly they’ll bounce back, right?
Exactly. And it’s surprising how rigidly we approach these passages without any touch of realism in our understanding of them.
For example let us suppose that I have on this earth lost a loved one who is very close to me, very special to me. Would anybody find it strange that I would weep and grieve over that?
If I didn’t they would find it strange. However as we all know losses of that kind that we experience on earth send us through a grief cycle.
And if we have good emotional structure and good personality structure there’s a recuperation period and we get to the place where we’re not weeping on it. I don’t at all.
For the human there may be spurts of weeping but eventually the weeping stops. The grieving stops. We go through a grief cycle, right?
So I think we may say that it goes almost without saying that a holy man who has something to grieve over will go through a grief cycle and then he’ll recover from it much better than we human beings down here with our sinful nature remaining in us would recover from a grief cycle.
But we all know people have recovered remarkably from deep and significant losses. So there’s no reason to think that the redeemed person who is transformed in the likeness of Christ will not have the capacity to bounce back as quickly as possible even from a deep grief like this.
Oh that’s fantastic. Yeah, yeah. Related question is in verse 28 the Lord says, “So take the talent from the third servant from him and give it to him who has ten talents.”
So my question here is the first two servants both doubled their what was given to them. Both received equal commendation, equal authority in the life to come evidently.
But now something is given to only one of the two, not to both of the two. And I wonder if you have any kind of a suggestion as to why this talent is given only to the one who had ten. Why isn’t it divided between these two?
Well I think the point here is that the structure of the parable is about three servants. As we know there are going to be far more than three servants. There will be you know thousands if not millions of servants on review here.
The point of taking the talent from the failing servant and giving it to one of the other servants is that the opportunity is lost by the failing servant and gained by a faithful servant.
Now I think it would be incorrect given the structure of the parable to read something into this about the inferiority of the success of the second servant.
Because suppose there had been a fourth servant and he had failed. Then it might very well be that his talent would be taken from him and given to the second servant.
Because both of them are committed at an equal level. But the nature and structure of the parable prevents that.
And in any case that’s not a very meaningful point. The meaningful point here is the loss of opportunity on the part of the unfaithful servant and it is gained by a faithful servant. That’s the essence of it.
So the talent represents opportunity for service. That’s the way I would express it.
Obviously this was a commercially oriented parable and the unfaithful servant was told he should have gone and put this in the bank so he could collect interest.
So we’re thinking in commercial terms here. But certainly money is a good image, a good parabolic image of opportunity because money has potential.
And so we would say every servant has potential granted to him by God. The parable is not interested in identifying the various forms of potential but the lessons about potential, right?
Okay. How about we go back to verse 29 briefly. “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance. But from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.”
My question is what does that mean? And does that principle stated here, and it’s stated elsewhere in the Scriptures as well, does it have application today to the believer? How we use what God has given us, how we take in his word, that sort of thing. How does this have application?
Well I think if my memory serves me correctly that the Lord does use this particular statement in more than one context. And each context would have to be examined to determine what its meaning might be.
I think there is one where the idea is that if you have knowledge of the Scripture more knowledge will be given to you. But that’s not the way he uses it here.
This is one of his very useful articulations which is applicable to a number of situations.
So I think the point here is that the man who appears before the judgment seat of Christ and has something to offer his Lord will get more.
And the man who appears before the judgment seat of Christ and doesn’t have anything to offer his Lord will lose what he already had.
So this belongs in the context of the judgment seat of Christ here. But another passage might put it in another context and make it another application.
That’s very, very helpful. Now another question is like as the third servant puts his talent in a handkerchief and he buries it, what, and when we realize that’s symbolic, but what does that symbolize? What would that look like in the life of a Christian today?
He says you should have deposited my money with the bankers. Now obviously that wouldn’t be doing as much as the first two servants did. But what does that minimal sort of involvement, what might that look like today?
That’s a good question. And I think one of the important elements of this parable is that it’s significant that the man with one talent is the one who does this.
Now that doesn’t mean it can’t be done by somebody who gets a lot of talents. But in this particular story it’s the man with the least amount of opportunity or ability or whatever you might describe it as who does the burying.
And I think that this is very true to life because in the Christian church there are people who realize correctly that they don’t have a whole lot of talent, they don’t have a whole lot of gift.
They may realize that they have something because the Scriptures assure us that all Christians have a spiritual gift.
But it is easier for the man with a small gift to say, “What can I do? You know I could never be a world-famous evangelist. I couldn’t even pastor a church. I can’t even teach a Sunday school class. I just won’t do anything. I’ve got so little talent that if I try to use it I probably squander it and mess it up, you know, like I do a lot of other things in my life. And so on. You know I just won’t do anything and we won’t do any harm by not doing anything.”
And that they’re thinking along the lines it seems to me of this third servant. He said, “You know I knew what kind of a master you were. You were a very exacting master. And I didn’t want to take a chance of you know blowing the talent that you gave me. So I just hid it so you could have it back.”
And the master says that’s the wrong approach. So I think we can understand why the parable singles out the least of the talented people for this because I think this is a greater temptation to do nothing, to hide my abilities when the abilities are small.
That’s very good. And the part about depositing the money with the bankers, you have any idea of various suggestions? Even that at the very least you could give money to others who are going to be effectively serving something.
Well then as much as this is a commercially based parable it’s likely enough that the other servants did the same thing. But if you had five talents and you invested very wisely you could reap another five talents. Ditto with two.
So I don’t think he’s saying you should have done something a little bit different than the other ones did. We don’t know what the others did.
And of course in our modern life today there are various ways of investing money. But the point is that there was accessible to this man a place where he could have done something with his money, right? There were bankers.
Instead of banking it he hid it. Now what we’re really saying here it seems to me for the Christian who feels he has minimal talents the church is his bank we might say.
He can invest it in the church life. It doesn’t matter. I mean the whole nature of gifts is that it’s given for the benefit and edification of the church.
So it doesn’t matter that he has so small a gift that he can make a contribution to the church. So if we wanted to make an application that would be one application of this, that the bank is there. Do something with the ability God’s given you.
Oh that’s fantastic. Thank you. And would it be fair to say then that Jesus is suggesting here that indeed there is some risk in the Christian life in investing what God has given us, but that timidity is the wrong approach?
That we should indeed take risk. You know it’s the old person that says if you never do anything you may not do anything wrong but you’re not going to do anything. So is there something about risk in this passage?
That’s an exceedingly good observation, Bob. And I think the answer to that is yes. The minute I try to serve God, significant or insignificant, I run a risk.
And not only run a risk of personal failure because my sinful nature induces me down the wrong path, but I also run into the opposition of Satan and Satan’s agents.
Satan does not sit idly by while I try to serve God. And so the guy with a lot of talents we almost take it for granted that Satan’s going to attack him, right?
But Satan has time to attack the many-talented Christian too. So I think there’s risk up and down the line.
But the more prominently God places you in ministry it seems to me the more the risks multiply because then you become a target for everybody and everything.
And therefore it seems to me that there’s every bit as much risk for the five-talent man as for the one-talent man. And the idea of risk is inherent in this parable.
Okay. One other point. As you mentioned Jesus taught on many occasions and he taught a similar parable in Luke 19, the parable of the minas, Luke 19:11-27.
And there instead of each one given according to their own ability, so five, two, and one with the talents, you have servants each of which are given one mina, one the same exact sum.
And in that case one of them goes from one to ten, one goes from one to five, and one buries his mina.
But what you find in that parable is they don’t receive equal commendation. Luke 19:17 is different than Luke 19:19. One of them hears “Well done, good and faithful servant. You know you’re going to rule over ten cities.”
The next one just hears “You also be over five cities.” I wonder if you can comment on the distinction between the two parables and what that tells us about what if we don’t maximize.
Because this one is just talking about two who maximize, one who buries. But doesn’t the minas talk about ones who don’t bury but also don’t maximize? That second servant.
I think that’s basically correct. Of course the key to the distinction between these two parables is that in the parable of the talents that we’ve just been discussing each individual receives a different amount of money to invest.
And it is specified that this is according to their ability. However in the parable of the minas all the servants received the same amount of money.
And by the way there were ten servants but only three of them are recorded here in the accounting part of it. So that’s all that’s necessary for the lessons.
It seems to me that there are two ways of looking at the capacity to serve. One is that I serve God in accordance with the abilities and the capacities that he has given me. And these vary from those given to other Christians.
The other is when I serve God with my heart and life I serve God with my whole self. So that at that level we can look at all Christians as equal no matter what their talents and abilities are.
There to give themselves fully to God. They are to serve God with all their hearts. That’s true of every Christian regardless of the gift that he’s given.
Alright. So in the parable of the minas what we have is really three men who start out at the goal line in exactly the same place. One does ten times the worth of his commitment. The next servant does only five times.
God can’t treat those as equal because there was nothing in the original commitment that would have prevented the second servant from getting as much money out of his investment as the first servant.
So the first servant gets, as you pointed out, a commendation in ten cities. The second servant doesn’t even get the commendation. He just gets the five cities.
And the third servant gets rebuked in no cities. But this is the, these are the two sides of the same coin. All Christians have an equal opportunity to serve God fully.
And they also have the opportunity to use their talents to the max. That is fantastic.
Now when we look next time at the idea of the outer darkness we can talk about this more. But just a brief word about the third servant.
The third servant in Luke 19 and it is interesting as you mentioned there ten servants but we follow three just like we follow three in the parable of the talents.
And the third servant there as in the talents buries. And so it appears that our Lord taught similar parables but on a different occasion he gave a different point to it as he did with the minas.
But it’s interesting with the minas the third servant is contrasted because there’s a group of people in the parable of the minas which is not found here.
Those are the citizens that didn’t want Jesus to rule over them which transparently looks at Israel, unbelieving Israel. And they are slain in his presence unlike the third servant.
So I wonder if you comment on how that parable would confirm our understanding of the outer darkness with this third servant.
Well I think I know what you mean and you can do a follow-up if you want to. But obviously the introduction of this fourth group in the parable of the minas is interesting.
And he says that bring them to me the ones that didn’t want me to rule over them and kill them in front of me. Or what does this represent?
Of course we remember that this is parabolic. It seems to me that this represents the final judgment and the second death.
In other words what occurs to these people? They also get a time in front of the master, right? But not until he is through with his servants. Not until he’s through with the men who were given the minas.
Then he says get them together. We know from Revelation a thousand years intervenes between the two judgments.
But the outcome of the second judgment is of his death, spiritual death eternally, the lake of fire.
So that’s imaged it seems to me representing the parable by this factor. That does certainly confirm the general approach that we took to the talents because the three servants obviously of the minas are in contrast to these people who are slain at a different time at a different judgment.
And that reinforces the interpretation that all three of the servants in the parable of the talents are saved.
Well thank you Zane. That’s fantastic. Did you have any other concluding comments about the parable of the talents?
Only that it seems to me that this offers us a very solemn warning that we should assess the abilities that God has given to us.
It would have been strange if the guy with five talents never counted the talents, you know, or the man with two talents never counted his talents. He knew. Had to count talents. And the first guy knew he had five.
And one of the important things is for us to, under the guidance of the Scriptures and with the prayerful waiting on the Lord, to discern what the gifts are that God has given us so we can maximize them.
If I’m careless about counting the money I’ve got to know what I have to invest. So that’s an additional lesson it seems to me.
So that raises an additional point just briefly. So although we don’t look at what God has given us to determine if we’re born again or not, we do look at what he’s given us and what we’re doing with it to determine how we’re doing in terms of these accountability parables.
I think that’s exactly right. And of course when we’re first saved we don’t know exactly what gift God has given us.
And one of the simplest ways to find out prayerfully and waiting on God is to attempt to serve Him in various ways.
There soon becomes obvious the ways in which it is natural for us to serve Him in which He blesses us in service.
I was encouraged for example at a very early stage of my Christian life by people who first heard me speaking. I was probably atrocious in those days.
But there were some people that I respected who detected gift in me. And so that encouraged me to cultivate that.
And over the years I think God has confirmed that I have a teaching gift. So what we’re talking about here is that in the very early phases of the Christian life we should be prayerfully looking for the capacity that God has given us.
And I think that God has a complete ability to show us and to assure us that He’s gifted us in a certain way.
And then based upon the way in which the Scriptures relate gifts to our lives we will be able to realize the solemnity or relative responsibility that we have based on our gift.
We are told for example “be not many teachers” because the teachers so receive a severe judgment.
So already we know if we discover that we have a teaching gift we are at a high level of responsibility and accountability. So that’s important too.
Just a quick point on that since you’ve touched on spiritual gifts and I would agree with you that we each have one, not multiple, in light of the idea if everyone was a hand or if everyone was an eye, if everyone was a foot I mean that wouldn’t make much sense if we could be both an eye and a foot or an eye and a hand.
But say for example I don’t have the gift of giving. I’m still to give. I don’t have the gift of helps. I’m still to help. I don’t have the gift of encouragement. I’m still to encourage.
I don’t have the gift of evangelism. I’m still to evangelize. I don’t have the gift of teaching. I’m still to teach my children. I’m still to teach others, etc.
So even though I may have but one spiritual gift I’m called to develop all of these other areas and even things that aren’t spiritual gifts: natural abilities, the finances God gives me, the time God gives me.
Would not all of that be part of what’s invested to us with a special emphasis of course on our spiritual gift? But wouldn’t all that be part of the package?
I think that’s exactly right. And I didn’t mean to imply that the parable is just about spiritual gift. Obviously the parable, the differentiation between the servants and one of the things that differentiates us is gift.
But that is certainly not the only thing that differentiates us. If I happen to be a single man I don’t have the responsibilities that God gives to a married man and I won’t be held accountable for those.
But maybe I have opportunities and responsibilities that come to me as a single man that a married man doesn’t have.
So I think we all have to look at our whole life and what God has given us and the abilities he’s given us and assess them accordingly.
Okay, very good. Thank you.