Faithful Stewardship: Lessons from the Parable of the Talents

D. A. Carson examines the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30, emphasizing the responsibility of Christians to use their gifts to serve and glorify God. He interprets the parable as a call to faithful stewardship, where the faithful servants are rewarded and invited to share in their master’s joy, while the unfaithful servant is cast out for his inaction.

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During our evening sessions we are going to be focusing on something of the Christian’s joy, of the Christian’s sense of being loved by God, and in each case we’ll focus on a phrase or a passage but try to set it within its own framework first. The one with which we begin tonight is found in Matthew 25, verses 14 to 30. In this passage we find twice Jesus saying, “Come and share your master’s happiness.” I’ll begin by reading the entire parable.

“Again, it …” That is the kingdom. “… will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave …” Most of our translations have five talents because the Greek word is talanton, but the problem is the Greek talanton doesn’t mean talents. It’s a weight measure. It’s a unit of weight, as I’ll explain in a moment. So one translation tries to capture it (not bad; it’s a bit of a paraphrase) as five bags of gold. We’ll put it that way.

“To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

Take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For those who have will be given more, and they will have an abundance. As for those who do not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ”

This is the Word of the Lord.

I wonder how many different kinds of waiting there are in the world. My son who is a Marine is called Nicholas. When he was 3 or 4, he had the most gargantuan appetite, and every time we came within half an hour of an expected meal, he would traipse behind his mother. No matter where she went, he was the little shadow, and he would start bleating after a while clearly wanting food.

It was very difficult to get across to a 3- or 4-year-old boy the law of delayed gratification. It was all, “Now!” Waiting that extra 10 minutes until the food was on the table was extremely difficult. Meanwhile, I may have been in my study noting that dinner time was coming and trying so hard to finish that chapter before dinnertime came. I was waiting for the same time. For him, the time was going ever so slowly; for me it was going much too fast. I didn’t want my wife to call me until I had finished the chapter. Same time. Different kind of waiting.

We wait for the sun to go down, catching each ray, entranced by the shifting patterns in the clouds. We wait for an answer from God. Job, sitting in an ash pit scraping his scabs with broken pottery. There are so many different kinds of waiting. In the section of Scripture before us this parable is part of five.

In the first half of Matthew 24, we find a pretty complicated passage about Jesus coming back at the end of the age. Then from 24:36 on, Jesus unravels five parables, all of which tell us how we should wait for Jesus’ return. I don’t have to go through all of them (I don’t have time), but let me outline the difference so you see how the thought develops.

In 24:36–44, where Jesus pictures two people working away in a field or two women at a hand-mill where one is squatted down and pulls the lever around and then the daughter, perhaps, on the other side grabs that lever and pulls it around another 180 degrees, and then the mother pulls it around 180 degrees.… Gathering at a mill. Two people working intimately together. The end comes, and one is taken and the other is left behind.

Whether taken away or taken in judgment is really not the point. The point is when Jesus comes back it will be so unexpected that even people working together on some intimate family project will be instantly divided. The point? Wait for the Lord Jesus as those who do not wish to be surprised by their master’s return.

Likewise, the parable of the thief (part of the same section). If you know when a thief is coming you’ll take precautions, but precisely because you haven’t taken precautions you get robbed. Jesus says, “Be always ready for the master’s return. Wait for the Lord Jesus as those who do not wish to be surprised by the master’s return.”

The second round (43 to 51). This is the parable of the unjust servant, this unjust servant who is not dealing fairly with all of the other servants in the house, and he begins to extort them, he begins to beat them, he begins to abuse them, and the master holds him to account when he returns.

There the point is wait for the Lord Jesus as stewards who must give an account of their service, faithful or otherwise. In other words, don’t only wait in such a way that you show you do not wish to be surprised when he comes but wait, knowing full well you must give an account of your service.

In 25:1–13, the parable of the ten virgins, wait for the Lord Jesus as those who know the master’s coming may be long delayed. The only difference between the five wise and the five foolish virgins is the five foolish virgins bring extra oil because they know full well the master could be delayed.

It helps to remember how weddings worked in those days. The groom would go and have some initial festivities at the bride’s place, and then there would be a procession through the streets to the groom’s place where the festivities properly began. In a wealthy household, that could go on for a whole week.

Just when the wedding party and the friends and so on could join the initial small group, that depended on when this procession through the streets took place, and that was a bit unpredictable. They didn’t have watches in those days. They had more of an African sense of time than a British sense of time, and as a result it could go after dark and be really delayed and so on.

But the five wise virgins account for the possibility of delay and have extra oil. The five foolish ones have gone off to the city to buy some more, so as a result they miss the procession and they are excluded. Wait for the Lord Jesus as those who know the master’s coming may be long delayed.

Now ours. Here the point is easily said. Wait for the Lord Jesus as slaves commissioned to improve their master’s assets. Let me explain, and then you’ll see how this feeds into what Jesus is inviting us to when he says, “Come and share your master’s happiness.” There’s one more after this I don’t have time to go into.

In other words, the thought goes beyond simply being ready for Jesus or performing one’s duty or being prepared for a long delay. Now the thrust is wait for Jesus as slaves commissioned to improve the master’s assets. What I shall do first of all is unpack the parable, tell the story again filling in enough details so you see how it works, and then we’ll reflect on what it means for us.

Slaves in the ancient world had highly diverse amounts of freedom and responsibility. Slavery in America, where I now live, was quite different in this respect. Virtually all the initial slaves either worked in sugarcane fields in the West Indies or on cotton patches or they became domestic slaves. They were always the lowest order, but in the ancient world sometimes slaves were accountants, school teachers. They could be managers and the like.

There were a lot of slaves that did nothing but peel potatoes or whatever, but nevertheless, slaves could be at highly different levels, so here we discover slaves whom the master entrusts according to the master’s perception of their individual ability. The word in most of our translations is servant, but in fact, the word is unambiguous in the original (it’s slave), and that becomes important in a moment so tuck it in the back of your mind.

This is the background to the plot of the narrative. The master now calls three of these slaves to him and he distributes a variety of talents. The talanton was a weight measure, usually of gold or silver. If it was silver, it amounted to 6,000 coins, 6,000 denarii. Each denarius was the equivalent to about one day’s wage for a worker, so 6,000 denarii may be a half a million pounds, and that’s if it’s of silver.

If it’s of gold, it’s a lot more money than that. You must see this is really quite a lot of wealth that he is distributing, and he gives five bags of gold or bags of silver to one according to his perception of that slave’s ability, two to another, and one to a third, all according to the master’s own assessment of each slave’s ability.

Verse 16: “The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more.” This doesn’t mean he went to the stock market and invested and, mercifully, it was a bull climate. No. When it says he put it to work it means he invested in businesses, got the business to work, started trading, worked hard in some sort of company that he established.

As a result, it flourished, and in due course, when the master came back after a long delay, there was double the amount. Now not 2-1/2 million pounds. Now 5 million pounds. All doubled? A lot of money! Similarly, for the servant who has been entrusted with two bags of gold, he has doubled it as well.

What does the master say? “After a long time the master of those servants returned …” This after a long time harks back to the preceding parable that the master could be a long time coming back. You have to plan for the long haul. You have to invest in the future. “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts …” When the first servant said, “ ‘Master, you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things …’ ”

Do you hear that? Faithful with a few things? Two-and-a-half million pounds? “You’ve been faithful with these few things,” which is suggesting, when the master speaks of many things, it is fabulously wealthy! “You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.” What are you going to do? Run a multi-billion pound corporation? “Come and share your master’s happiness!”

Exactly the same words are used with respect to the second man. What the master promises is, first, increased responsibility (“You have been faithful in a few matters; I’m going to jack up your level of responsibility”), and secondly, a share in his master’s joy. We’ll tease out that expression in a few moments. The consummated kingdom brings not only new responsibility and, presumably, the energy and capacity to discharge it, but spectacular, holy delight that Jesus calls his own happiness. We’ll come back to that.

Then the third man comes. Verse 24: “Master, I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.” You can understand his logic. The master has given him some gold. He’s supposed to make something of it.

Supposing he is successful, does he get any reward? It’s his master’s money. Supposing he loses it or supposing he makes a bad investment or supposing he starts a company that goes belly-up, then he’ll have nothing to show for it. If he is successful, the money is not his. If he’s a failure, he’s robbing his master, and his master in his view is hard. He wants blessing. He wants income. He wants increase where all he has done is put in some money. Where’s the sweat equity? He’s a hard man wanting to reap where he hasn’t sown.

You can understand this servant’s point of view, can’t you? In fact, because we’ve been brought up in the Western world where we’re familiar with trade unions who insist rightly that they have the right to withdraw their work, to withdraw their services, then why should the master be angry? This servant simply withdrew his services. What’s the matter with that?

We naturally have some sympathy for him, but everything changes if you remember in the account this is not simply an employee who is a member of a strong trade union. He’s a slave. He’s a slave who has been given a job. Lest this trouble you, this no more condones slavery as a human institution than the comparison between Jesus and a thief in chapter 24 condones thievery.

Jesus says his return is like the shocking, surprising coming of a thief, but that does not mean Jesus is condoning thievery any more than this is condoning slavery. Nevertheless, Jesus is looking for a human analogy that would have made sense at the time to get the point across. That is, it’s not simply that the slave has been charged with doing something with this bag of gold and since he decides not to do so, therefore, he is free to go and do something else.

Rather, precisely because he is a slave, he is owned by the master too. He doesn’t have the right to withdraw his services. He can’t appeal to the justice that is going to be provided by the local trade union representative. He’s a slave. He’s a slave to the master. The master has given him something to do, and he hasn’t done it.

Worse, granted that he hasn’t done it, he hasn’t done the bare minimum that would have at least earned some interest on his master’s money. He hasn’t even done that. He hasn’t put it in the bank, which is why his master replies, “You wicked, lazy slave! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? All right, then. Use your own logic. What should you have done? You should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.”

Then the final judgment. “Take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For those who have will be given more, and they will have an abundance. As for those who do not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The main point is clear enough. That is, we are to wait for the Lord Jesus as slaves commissioned to improve their master’s assets. Let us think through what this means.

1. Our task as Christians while we wait for Jesus is to improve our master’s assets not our own.

Copping out is not an option. Responding, “Yeah, it’s my life, so I’ll do what I want with it,” is not an option. We’re slaves. Isn’t that a constant New Testament theme? You have been bought with a price. You have been bought by the blood of Christ Jesus. You were a slave to sin. Now you’re a slave to Christ. Those are the only two options in the New Testament, and there is the genuine freedom.

Jesus cannot consider it possible for someone to come along and truly be one of Jesus’ forgiven slaves if that slave, then, is not concerned about improving the master’s assets. It just doesn’t make any sense. That’s not what a genuine slave does. This suggests that part of our responsibility, to use the teaching of Jesus elsewhere, is to be passionate about laying up treasures in heaven, not simply laying up treasures in our own bank accounts here. Something much more. Improving the master’s assets. We’ll tease that out a bit more in a moment.

2. Presupposed in the parable is that Jesus’ followers, his slaves, joyously recognize their roles and responsibilities as slaves so their conduct is different.

They take on this responsibility. They want to do what he says. They have a certain thankfulness and pride, gratitude, loyalty in wanting to improve their master’s assets.

Much more than merely the loyalty of a good employee who wants the company to progress, this is something more. This is a slave who is going to take his or her slavery seriously out of the most profound affection for the master. “I was a slave to sin and degradation; now I am in the joyous slavery of Christ Jesus, and I want to improve all that is his.”

It is impossible in the New Testament to think of a person who has genuinely been converted, genuinely been born again, genuinely received the Spirit of God whose conduct remains unchanged. It just doesn’t happen. Do you remember what Jesus says, for example, about the new birth in John, chapter 3?

He draws an analogy eventually. He says, “Look at the wind. You don’t know where it comes from, you don’t know where it goes, but you see its effect.” You don’t find Jesus and Nicodemus standing on a street corner in Jerusalem saying, “Yes, that tumbleweed.… The wind is coming from the Southeast. There must be a high over the Arabian Peninsula. I’m sure in due course it will be pushed out by anti-cyclonic effects coming down from the North.” They’re not thinking in those terms.

Even as we look at our radar screens today and see something more about meteorology than our forbearers knew, nevertheless, as we experience wind in ordinary life, we’re not thinking about exactly where it came from. We’re watching the leaves fall, the clouds scud across the sky. We’re feeling the cool air on our skin as we climb out of the sea. We may not know where it came from, but we can’t deny its effects.

Then Jesus says, “So it is with everyone who is born of God.” Everyone. So that you and I may not be able to explain all that well and in all that great detail exactly how the new birth works, exactly the mechanics of the Spirit’s operation in our lives, but you can’t deny the effects. Isn’t that what Jesus says in still other terms?

In Matthew’s gospel in chapter 7: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not done this or that in your name? Even miracles and all the rest?’ Then I will say to them, ‘Depart from me. I never knew you. You’re just a worker of iniquity.’ ” Because where genuine conversion takes place, where we really do become slaves of Jesus, where we have been born again, it makes a difference in our conduct. So also here. The two good slaves here delight to improve their master’s assets. That’s what they’re thinking about.

3. If you put this parable in the context of Matthew 25 beginning with the foolish virgins, then we may remind ourselves of something obvious: the foolish virgins failed because they thought their part was too easy.

They just showed up and were going to wait. They had not planned ahead. They had not made provision. They had not expected to persevere to the end. They failed from thinking their part too easy. The wicked servant here fails for thinking his part too hard, so he opts out.

There are some who take the name of Christ who blossom and flourish in the church for a little while, but they have no stick-to-itiveness. Jesus tells other parables about plants that have no root and then a bit of persecution or trial comes and they just keel over and die. There’s no perseverance.

But it’s also possible to look around at the challenges of our culture or the decline of the West or the discouragement in our local churches or our families are going through a tough patch, and we just sort of curl up inside, have a little pity party, and deep down we start thinking, “God is one really tough dude. He doesn’t really care for me. Why should I do anything for him?”

Jesus tells a parable against both of those errors. Here it’s against the error of those who make excuses thinking, “It’s all about God-centeredness, and it’s all about what is rich for him and what am I supposed to do? Can’t I get on with my life?” Let me stretch this a bit. I’ve been doing university missions now for 30 or 35 years, and in the last 15 years or so I’ve been picking up some questions from students that I never heard before.

I cannot speak on any university campus without somebody bringing up this question. Twenty years ago nobody asked it; today nobody doesn’t ask it. The question is, “Why should the Bible focus so much on God all the time?” Bring glory to God? Isn’t that what Ray was speaking on? Bring glory to God and enjoying him forever.

If one of us started having the kinds of relationships with our friends in which we were always promoting ourselves and being the center of every affection and the center of every adoration, wouldn’t we be thought hopelessly narcissistic, hopelessly self-focused, hopelessly selfish? When God demands that we focus everything on him and our concern for his assets, doesn’t that make God narcissistic? Really ugly. That’s not attractive.

That question is put to me on any university campus nowadays where I speak about the Lord Jesus, and what is the Christian’s response? It’s true to say, after all, God is God and we’re not. He is the center. That’s all true, but it’s more than that. The point is, because we have been made in his image by him and for him, it is for our good that we be God-centered.

It is for our good that we see him in his beauty and adore him. It is for our good that we hunger to do whatever he wants because he’s not being mean. He knows what is for our good, and our bad is always bound up with running away from him. When he focuses our attention on himself, all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time, it’s not only because he is God, but it is also for our good. Nothing else will redeem us but that our attention should be focused on him.

Will it help us if this God comes to us and says, “Quite frankly, whether you choose me or some other god, I really don’t give a rip; I don’t care”? Will that save us? It is precisely for our good, for our eternal transformation, that we see God in his beauty, in his glory, in his holiness, in his grace, and worship him.

We’re his slaves by creation, by redemption, and this great and merciful God, instead of just wiping us out, he gives us things and says, “Go ahead now. Improve my assets.” Because he has transformed his genuine slaves, they delight to improve the master’s assets. This becomes their passion, their desire.

4. Our waiting for Jesus’ return is never merely passive.

We have an obligation then to tease out what this improvement of the master’s assets looks like. How can you improve God’s assets? In one sense, God owns anything and everything already. I’m his. Whatever money I have is his. My time is his. There’s nothing I have that’s not his. But what does it mean to improve the master’s assets when you come out of the parabolic world? What does it mean?

What it means, of course, is a huge array of things. It means giving a glass of cold water in the name of the Lord Jesus. It means forgiving one another. It means the proclamation of the gospel. Can you imagine Christians going month after month after month after month and never sharing the gospel with anyone when we are commissioned to improve the master’s assets?

It means loving integrity and justice. It means building faithfulness into our homes. It means living with eternity’s values in view. It means investing in heaven, the consummated new heaven and new earth toward which we press. It means giving an account for our priorities, what we have done with our imaginations, with our hours, with our reading, with our working, with our relationships with our neighbors, with our fellow believers, improving the master’s assets all the time.

Of course, some will be given more talents than some others. Some will be faithful in small, hidden tasks in the church (keeping the machinery going, working hard in small areas, being faithful in the family), and others will be given far more public roles, but all of us are responsible to improve the master’s assets.

This parable does not tell us everything about how we improve those assets; it’s making the generalized point. When we say we are waiting for Christ’s return, part of our waiting mode must be a waiting that is committed while we wait, not merely to waiting passively but to doing what we can to advance the kingdom, to proclaim the gospel, to do good to our neighbors, to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength. Not because these things win us heaven (No, no, we’re already the master’s slaves), but precisely because as his slaves we want to improve his assets. That brings us then to the final observation.

5. This man who fails in this regard is not merely not given certain responsibilities but gets into heaven in any case; rather, he is dismissed and denounced.

“You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? This is what you should have done. Meanwhile, take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags, and throw that worthless slave outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!”

In other words, the parable preserves only two outcomes: either the outcome where the servants hear the master’s words, “Well done, good and faithful slave! You have been faithful in a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Come and share your master’s happiness,” or “Throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Inevitably I am forced to ask you into which camp do you fit? I know, even after we have done everything we can to improve the master’s assets, at the end of the day there are other parables that remind us to be humble. After all, Jesus tells another parable that teaches us that we remain unprofitable servants.

In other words, even if we’ve done everything.… We’ve made some mistakes along the way, some failures, and God’s grace still washes over us and receives us. I’m not asking you if you’ve been a sinless saint. I’m asking you if it’s part of your passion as a Christian, as a Christ-slave, to improve your master’s assets. If not, are you a Christian at all, or will you be with this chap who is thrown outside where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth exposed for the falseness of his status?

Within this framework, then, to enter into the master’s happiness is, first of all, to receive his wonderful approval. Imagine on the last day hearing the blessed resurrected Jesus in all of his unshielded glory looking on you and saying, “Well done, good and faithful slave!” That’s not reserved for George Whitfield or John Newton. It’s not reserved for big names.

It’s reserved for forgiven people whose lives have been so transformed, whether in big issues or in small issues, they hunger to improve their master’s assets. They think in terms of eternity. They’re not just thinking about how to improve adequate assets for their own children. There’s some responsibility for that.

After all, the Bible says those who don’t provide for their own family, when they can, are worse than infidels. They’re worse than unbelievers. Of course, I’m not denying there’s a place for such familial responsibility (that’s not the point), but these slaves have so been transformed by grace that they have hungered in their lives. They have found ways in their lives, quietly, to improve the master’s assets, and on the last day they gain his approval.

Not only his approval, but more responsibility. If you’re tired and exhausted, maybe more responsibility doesn’t sound good to you, but it might sound wonderful to you if you could think of taking on more responsibility because God gives you more strength, more capacity, more endurance. No fatigue. No failure. More responsibility according to his infinite wisdom in transformed, resurrected bodies. That too is part of the happiness that is yours, but above all, “Come and share your master’s happiness.”

It’s not just the happiness he confers; it’s the happiness that is his. He returned via the cross to the glory he had with the Father before the world began in the most intimate, perfect communion of unqualified love and delight, and now, in the consummated new heaven and new earth, you will share forever in your master’s happiness.

I do not think you and I can build long-term spiritual stability or moral fidelity or business integrity or familial strength or genuine spirituality unless we hunger above all for the master’s, “Well done,” on the last day, unless before our eyes constantly what we want is sharing the master’s happiness, the happiness that belongs to the triune God and the perfection of holiness and joy forever. Let us pray.

Lord God, when we think about joy and sorrow, forbid that the entire frame of reference should be bound up with the joys and sorrows of this life. We thank you for the tests that come in this life. We thank you for giving us strength and the vicissitudes we all face sooner or later in this life.

We thank you for the joy of the Lord even now which is our strength, which we shall look at later in the week, but open our eyes, we pray, that we may see this ultimate joy, this ultimate happiness, this happiness that belongs to the master himself in the presence of his Holy Father, bound up with the grace that is worked in our lives to produce fruit, quietly by his grace improving the master’s assets.

Give us a passion for such a vision, Lord God, we beg of you, and Lord, if there is even one person here today who knows full well that he or she is not interested in the slightest in improving the assets of the great and glorious resurrected Savior, open their eyes, we pray, so they may see the horrible danger in which they find themselves and even now where they sit cry, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” For Jesus’ sake, amen.