How Do You Regard God

Title: How Do You Regard God By Pastor Lohn Johnson
Text: Matthew 25:“Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” This is the Word of the Lord. INTRODUCTION:   My dear friends in Christ, This is a text that has often been misunderstood and misapplied: it’s usually preached as a stewardship sermon, where the theme goes something like, “God likes those who give.” Without a doubt, there’s some stewardship application in this text, but this isn’t a parable about stewardship. It’s a parable about the kingdom of heaven. This is about how we are to live as we anticipate the Lord’s return in glory.
I. Let’s Examine the Parable from this perspective.
	A. The parable begins with a man going on a journey; and before he goes, he entrusts his servants with his property.
			1. One receives five talents—a talent is about twenty years’ wages for a servant, so this one is entrusted with a hundred years’ worth. The next receives two talents, about forty years’ worth of wages. The third receives one talent, which is still an awful lot of money.
			2. After a long time, he returns to find out what they’ve done with his money. The one who received five talents has doubled it to ten, and the one who received two talents has doubled it to four. Each receives the same praise from the master.
		B. But as we look at this parable I think that the question we need to ask is this: What is the sin of the third servant that causes him to be cast into the outer darkness? If we get that, then I think we’ll get the rest of the parable right.
			1. And the third servant has failed to produce: he comes to the master and says, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man,… , so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here is your talent.”. Please note: the third servant didn’t squander the gift, He didn’t lose it or steal it or gamble it away. But the master is furious. So what makes the master so angry? It’s not that the servant failed to double the investment: the master got his original investment back, and he isn’t angry about one measly talent. No, what makes the master angry is that the servant regards him as a hard man. There’s no proof that the master is a hard man: this is simply how the servant thinks of him. The servant considers his master to be ruthless, unforgiving. This would potentially have adverse effects in all sorts of ways. Ruthless masters are easily resented.  He is so afraid of provoking the wrath of the tyrant he’s created in his mind that he’s lived a life of fear, paralyzed into inaction. Or to put it another way, he doesn’t trust the master at all.
II. And now we can Apply the Parable to us today.
		A. it’s obvious that the master is the Lord. He is “gone away” in that He waits to return in glory on the Last Day. In the meantime, He entrusts many gifts to His people—to you. You’re stewards of what God has entrusted to you, and you are to use it in service to Him.
			1. The message of this parable is not that you need to double whatever God has given you in order to be successful. How would you measure that anyway? Do you need to double your tithes, offerings and hours of service to the Church for God to be pleased with you? Then maybe double them again next year?
			2. But really The question should be: how do you regard your Master? Do you regard the Lord as hard and ruthless, or gracious and merciful?
						a. If you regard the Lord as hard and ruthless, this will be reflected in your stewardship of all that He entrusts to you. You will live a life where you fear God’s anger for your missteps.  You will want to hoard what you have to yourself: you’ll be reluctant to give offerings and spend time in service to others. You’ll believe that what you have is yours apart from God.. Why? In part, it’s because you’re afraid that your Master is a miser, and that He won’t provide you with anything more than what you already have. In part, it’s also because you’ll have no love for your Master if you see Him as a hard man: and you do not want to support what you do not love. b. If you regard the Lord as a hard man, you’ll also resent when He gives more to others because it’s so unfair. If you regard the Lord as ruthless, you’ll see worship as a mandatory so as not to anger Him, and you’ll see opportunities to serve as one more chore that you have to do to keep the Master off your back.  c. If you regard the Master as a hard man, you will never believe that He loves you. You will not want to be anywhere near Him. On the Last Day, the Master will grant you your desire: an eternity far away from Him—the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
				B. The truth is that God is not a hard man. God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
			1. There is no greater demonstration of this than the cross.
						a. On that cross God demonstrates above all that He is not hard.  Christ becomes man to win salvation for you by His death. b. Now God declares that He desires you to be His beloved child so much that He has given His only beloved Son to die in your place, so that you might be forgiven and holy in His sight. He declares that you are a beloved child of God: heaven is already yours! You don’t live as one afraid of God’s ruthlessness. You live as His child, set free.
			2. There are two more demonstrations of His grace and mercy in our text.
				a. The first is that He gives you all sorts of gifts for use in this life—money, talent, goods, time, etc. Everything you have is a gift of God. Nothing is yours: and He entrusts what you have to you for a time. He doesn’t need you to get His will accomplished, but He gives you the privilege of living as His instrument, free to serve b. The second demonstration of God’s mercy and grace is found in the master’s words to the first two servants: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” After your less-than-perfect stewardship here, what does the Lord say of heaven? He’s going to give you more. The kingdom of heaven is yours—not because you’re an ace at using what God’s given you now; but because—Christ has sacrificed Himself on the cross to deliver you.
III.   Your life is not one of a servant afraid of a hard master. You live as one convinced that your Master is gracious and merciful.
		A. This will be reflected in your stewardship of all that He entrusts to you. Rather than resenting a hard God, you will live a life in which you acknowledge joyfully that you are the Lord’s instrument to serve.
			1. Rather than fear His anger at your missteps and sins, you’ll quickly run to Him and confess your sins because you’re confident that Christ has died so that you might be forgiven. 2. If you regard your Master as gracious and merciful, it will be evident in your offerings and service—because then you’ll be able to give with the glad confidence that the Lord will always supply what you need. You’ll live comfortably with the truth that nothing is really yours, that everything you have belongs to God anyway. You won’t live in fear that God will turn off the spigot, because He’s promised to provide. You will contribute to the needs of the Church because you want to, out of love and gratitude for the Lord’s gifts to you. 3. If you regard your Master as gracious and merciful, you won’t resent when others receive more from His hand; because you acknowledge that Holy God knows better than you as to what you can handle, and what others can handle. 4.  If you regard the Lord as gracious and merciful, then worship is not a chore: it’s a place in which your Master gives to you—there He graciously pours out upon you forgiveness and faith.
		B. This text then, is not primarily about how you use what God gives. It’s about how you see your God.
			1. Your stewardship of what God gives is a way to examine how you regard God, if you regard God as a hard master, then you will never believe He is gracious and merciful, and that will be reflected in your stewardship. If you regard God as gracious and merciful, then you will act and give and serve out of gratitude for all that God has done for you. 2. How do you regard God? The truth is that you’re probably somewhere in between.
					a. If you regarded God as only hard and ruthless, then you probably wouldn’t be here in church. b. If you fully and unreservedly acknowledged God as gracious and merciful, then you wouldn’t be here either—you’d be in heaven, delivered from the sinful nature that still clings. c. But here you are, which means that you’re a conflicted mix of acknowledging God’s grace and worrying that He’s not going to provide. d. Repent when you consider God hard: He’s never given you a reason. Confess the worry and the fear. Rejoice in His forgiveness—forgiveness that takes away the sin and strengthens your faith against fear.
CONCLUSION: Our God is not a hard master. He is gracious and merciful, and He continues to pour out upon you His gifts, all for the sake of Jesus. By the faith that He gives, we cling to this salvation that Christ has won for us. And because of Jesus, you can be confident that, on the Last Day, your gracious and merciful Savior will say to you “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your Master…because you are forgiven for all of your sins.” The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.   Amen