Sunday, September 04, 2016

Living Up to God's Gift

Living Up to God's Gift

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10)

Khen Lim


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Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, originally published February 26 1986 (Image source: gocomics.com)

In the Parable of the Talents (Mt 25:14-30), Jesus relates how a master had planned a journey that would take him away for a very long time but before he set about to depart, he called upon three able servants and entrusted them with a fairly substantial amount of money in a hope that they would do something positive with it. This would be when he return in the future asking for an account from each of them.
The key focal point here is the word Talent, which derives from the Greek word to mean ‘scale’ or ‘balance’ but is more practicably used during the Roman-Greek era to represent the weight of silver or gold. One talent was also the equivalent to 6,000 denarii, which works out to be roughly twenty years’ worth of labour.
In other words, that’s a lot of money. Given that the master in the parable gave them five, two and one talent respectively, that adds up to a princely sum of money. If we consider how much income we could earn in a span of two decades, we would understand the enormity of the scale here.

The larger picture
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The servants with the talents (Image source: lds.org)
While on face value, the parable talks about talents in monetary terms, Jesus is referring to the word in equivalence to the gifts that God gives to each of us. The three servants, being entrusted with different amount of talents, suggests that God gives each and every one of us not just different gifts but varying amounts as well. 
Some people turned out to be incredibly talented, some others quite so while many of us have enough talent to do something worthwhile with. We are, in fact, qualifiers of the third type – the one-talent person whom God has given more than we need to do amazing things in glory to Him.
Therefore Jesus uses the parable to teach us to be productive with the gifts that the Father has given us. We are to be useful to Him. We are to utilise it to bring people to His Kingdom by spreading the Good News. We are to invest our talents in the right areas so that we can become as resourceful as possible for Him. 
The parable therefore instructs us not to hide our gifts and not make use of them. It discourages us from being idle with these talents but instead to put them to excellent use. The parable also tells us the serious repercussions if and when we fail to make good use of the gifts that God has given us. These repercussions are explained in horrific detail, which Jesus did not mince words in driving home how angry the Father would be when we choose to be unproductive.
When Jesus talks about investment in this parable, He is referring to our effort in investing our talents in advancing the Kingdom of God. In other words, if we use our talents to worship Him, to bring unbelievers to Christ, to spend some time talking to others to share the Good News, to invest in mission work so that others may succeed in enlarging His Kingdom, then this is the kind of investment that makes us worthy and useful to the Father.

Failing to honour God
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The third servant buries the talent (Image source: lds.org)
Everywhere we look, there are talented people. In the commercial world, the entertainment industry, in academia, in the fields of medicine and technology, in the sporting arena and even the church, there is no shortage of people with awesome capabilities and skills who use them to become super successful, influential and dominant in what they do. Throughout the centuries, we have many names of famous people with immortalised reputations because of their extraordinary talents.
The world has, however, changed over the last century. As sin enlarges its coverage, more and more talented people are pining to exploit their gifts not to bring glory to God but to enrich themselves. This self-aggrandisement is about material wealth and worldly importance. It is about selfish dominance and a preoccupation with self-worth.
Despite the fact that all such talents come from God, many of these people credit their achievements back to themselves. They fail to honour God, yet on the outset, they certainly were productive with their God-given talents except that they choose to ignore Him and be indifferent to where their gifts came from.

Seven important clues
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Image source: scifi.stackexchange.com
In the parable, Jesus leaves us with important clues about this investment He talks about. Other than investments, He talks about seven notable things:
By giving us the gifts, Jesus expects us to be responsible with them (v14). In the famous superhero comic series, Ben Parker told his young nephew, Peter Parker (alias Spiderman) pretty much the same thing when he said, “With great power comes great responsibilities.” These responsibilities mean we are to use the gifts wisely. We are not to flaunt them because they come from God and we have no hand in creating them. We are not to waste them but to make the fullest use of our gifts in a responsible manner.
Jesus views the gifts we are given as something we can use in partnership with Him (vv21,23). In other words, we don’t have to work alone in harnessing our gifts and producing results. He will be with us all the way. He will be behind us to encourage us to proceed. He will be in front of us, shielding us from harm. He will be alongside us, comforting and strengthening our resolve. It is only be way of partnership that our gifts can yield the truest and most powerful results.
With the gifts given to us, Jesus considers that we have jobs to do and accomplish with them (vv21,23). In other words, we are not to be idle with them and neither should we pretend we don’t have the gifts. We waste a great deal of time, dissuading ourselves of the talents that God has given us when we should get on with the job that our gifts are most suited to.
With the gifts we are given come Jesus’ high standards (v24) and in them are His expectations of what we are to do with them. His demands are that we do the best we can (v26), knowing that God always gives us enough to get the job done to His pleasure. The famous Lightbulb Joke may be humorous to many but it is also a clear illustration that we don’t need a lot to get things done. Essentially, it is the one-talented people who fleshed out the stories in the Bible and they lay proof that we don’t have to be ‘jacks of all trades’ or a human Swiss knife to do amazing things for God.
Jesus lays it out very clearly that by burying the talent in the ground, the servant was being safe and sound (vv25,28) but then He considers this an act of criminal proportions. Instead, He wants us to be risk-takers like the servant with the five talents (v28). This means braving it out for God and to put out our very best in striving to revere Him. To take risks for God is to pursue the highest stakes out of sheer desire to honour a holy God.
Jesus makes sure we understand that while He is away to prepare a place for us in the Father’s Kingdom (Jn 14:2-3), we are not to be idle but instead, do great and positive things that bring honour to Him (v27). In other words, He wants us to be productive in the spiritual realm as well as in bringing real people to Him. 
Productivity in this sense is far larger than mere material wealth, fame or career success. To Jesus, the most powerful way to be productive is not to think of the safety net but to let go and free ourselves from the shackles that bind our senses to our world in bondage.
It is when we are indifferent to the gifts we’re given that angers Jesus (v26). God gives us the opportunities and we squander them in different ways. Perhaps we don’t care to know what talents God has given us. Maybe we know but we pretend we don’t so that we don’t have to ‘volunteer’ and do things. Some of us make full use of their talents and become materially successful and yet do nothing in church. Some others ply their skills in church in search of personal fame to advance their agenda but they do all this within the veneer of worshipping God.

Falling out with God
God takes no pleasure in any of these. It’s not just those who don’t use the gifts. It’s also those who do use them but in an irresponsible manner. Using our talents to get somewhere in the world is one thing but when we do not attribute the gifts back to God or when we deny His existence, He will understandably be furious (v26). And it’s not terribly difficult to understand why God would feel this way.
If a father puts all his heart into finding and purchasing the right gift for his son, he has every right to expect him to be thankful, appreciative and grateful at the very least. More importantly, it is the father’s desire that his son makes good use of it to bring honour to him and the family. That means using the gift to do things that bring joy, pleasure and satisfaction to the father.
On the other hand, if the son were to shove the gift in the closet never to see the light of day, if he abuses the gift for his own mortal advantage, if he uses it and claims all the glory, reserving none for one who gave the gift, then there is every reason to expect the father would be far more than just displeased. He’s likelier to be angered by what he knows and he could vent his fury as a result.
For those who are still in the dark about the importance of honouring God with the gifts He has entrusted us with, check out the last five verses of the parable. Here Jesus delivers a serious blow to those of us who take this too lightly. This is an immensely powerful warning of the forces He can summon to vanquish those who not just ignore the gifts His Father gave us but use them in ways He finds disapproving. The words are damning:
Jesus will call us lazy and wicked (v26) and most unfortunately, He will do far more than just take away our gifts (v28). The last verse is particularly horrible because the reality for those who ignore the responsibilities for the gifts is damnation of the worst order in which we suffer the perpetual indignation of endless pain wrecking our bodies inside and out.

Three final things to know
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Image source: lds.org
To round this out, I believe that to better understand the real gist of the Parable of the Talents, we must read it while we consider the following three things:
Know our relationships
Firstly, we must know that the parable offers us a parallel analogy of our relationship with Jesus. The master in the parable is Jesus and we are His servants. In my realm of reality, I am most likely to be the servant blessed with one talent but to understand Jesus’ lesson, I choose not to follow in the footsteps of the servant in the parable.
It is Jesus who gave us back our lives. Through dying on the cross, He took on all our sins and in sparing us, He offered us a deal we can’t go wrong with. His love for us is everlasting and beyond what we can understand. His brand of love is such that He has infinite patience when we stumble or when we are obstinate. He is also forgiving when we prove to be selfish, mean and ruinous. Though no fault of His that we fall, He would still pick us up, dust us off, clean and comfort us and then heal our wounded heart before He sends us out.
It is not much that He then asks us to live for Him, to serve Him dutifully and to offer Him everything we’ve got. He surely doesn’t demand it but we can easily find it in our hearts to say that He deserves every bit of us. As our master and we His servants, we must bear the responsibility to use our gifts to serve Him with all our hearts.

Know Who gave us our talents
Secondly, we need reminding that it is Jesus who gave us the talents we have. Frank Sinatra was wrong – we couldn’t have done things our way. Without God and the talents He gave him, Frank wouldn’t be Frank. No one should lay claim to their own achievements because it was Jesus who entrusted each of us with the potential to do wonderful things that are meant to honour Him and not us.
And in all of us, our talents are unique. Though we are all created in His image, we are still exclusively different from one another and so our gifts produce different abilities, cover different things and we excel in different ways. But all the same, each of us is bestowed the opportunity and potential to serve Him. The problem, however, is that we either don’t think we can or we just wouldn’t try.
When Jesus gives us the talent, He does so in the exact portions enough to do wonderful things. We might not think so but God is never wrong. We don’t need any more than we already have and in what little we think we have, that’s all it takes to make a mark for Christ. And remember, you may think it’s only a little talent, that is all Christ needs for Him to work in us.
Therefore, for all the talents that Jesus has given all of us in church, we will have enough to go around and make things work. We have enough to cover our bases. You’ll find that there are people who will bring amazing capabilities to the mix and in the end, don’t be surprised to find that if God has a purpose to keep any church afloat, it is because He knows we have what it takes to make things work.
No matter how small the church, if God has kept it alive, it means we have the people and the means to do so. So the next time you look at your pastor, look again and you might find a whole lot other people in church who can actually do other things as well. You may not write well but someone else can. You may not preach well but you could fit right in for sharing Bible studies. You may not be a great worship leader but you sure can play the guitar.

Know how to use your talents
Thirdly, if you’re given a certain talent, know there is a reason why and Ephesians 2:10 should give us a clue: ‘For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’
We are all created to serve God by doing good works. God has made sure that in each of us, we are equipped to do exactly that. The gifts He has given us will complement the purposes He has in each of us to fulfil. So the reason for the talents we have is to honour God who is the One who gave those gifts to us.
Jesus has expectations for what He has given us, which is why He gets upset and angry when we fail to use our talents and abilities. This happens when we ignore our gifts, when we misuse or abuse our gifts, when we belittle our gifts and/or when we deliberately neglect to use our gifts. In any of these situations, we give God every reason to be furious with us. The problem with God being this angry is we pay a hefty and very ugly one-way price.
Never see our talents as anything other than a privilege from God. It is an incredible opportunity that we would have robbed ourselves if we didn’t make full use of it. It is also a heinous crime to ignore using our gifts because it also robs others of experiencing the joy and pleasure of your talents as well (1 Pt 4:10). 
With our talents, God has a route through you in which He can put us into His greater plan in which He can then partner us. Without our talents, God will not be able to do any of this and therefore, He will find us as useless as weeds destined for the furnace of fire. Without our talents, we also rob God of His chance in using us further.

There is no zero option
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Outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth (Image source: jesuswithoutbaggage.wordpress.com)
By now, it is clear that Jesus has left us with talents but only one option – use them. To put it bluntly, we don’t have a choice. To put it even more bluntly, use it or else. The story gets very clear but ugly towards the end of the parable in verses 29-30 (NIV):
29 To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away. 30 Now throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
There is nothing to lose in using our talents. Rather we have everything to lose if we don’t. Our fear is not in what people have to say about us using our talents. Instead our fear is how God would respond if we didn’t. We also shouldn’t be afraid of people expecting us all the time to rely on our talents. The more we use our talents to bring people to Christ, the more we are investing our lives in the Kingdom of God. And if we ever fear we might fail when we use our gifts, think about the real fear when we, instead, fail to use our gifts.
As God expects of us to carry the weight of our talents around and use them, consider it a done deal. After all, it’s not worth considering the alternative.



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