[0:00] Well, this morning, if you have a Bible, please turn to Luke's Gospel, Luke chapter 19.
[0:12] We are taking a week off Exodus just now, and we are enjoying Stan and Anne-Marie being with us. And Stan is going to be speaking on this parable that Jesus tells.
[0:30] About his kingdom and his activity. So if you have a Bible, Luke 19. If you don't, there's Bibles in the pews somewhere, and it'll be up on the screen.
[0:48] From verse 11 in Luke 19. So, speaking of Jesus.
[1:03] As they heard these things that Jesus taught, he proceeded to tell a parable because he was near to Jerusalem and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.
[1:20] Jesus said, therefore, a noble man went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return.
[1:34] Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas and said to them, engage in business until I come. But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him saying, we do not want this man to reign over us.
[1:53] When he returned, having received the kingdom, he ordered these servants to whom he had given the money to be called to him that he might know what they had gained by doing business.
[2:07] The first came before him saying, Lord, your mina has made ten minas more. And he said to him, well done, good servant. Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.
[2:23] And a second came saying, Lord, your mina has made five minas. And he said to him, and you are to be over five cities. Then another came saying, Lord, here is your mina, which I kept laid away in a handkerchief, for I was afraid of you because you are a severe man.
[2:45] You take what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow. He said to him, I will condemn you with your own words, you wicked servant.
[2:56] You knew that I was a severe man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow. Why then did you not put my money in the bank? And at my coming, I might have collected it with interest.
[3:08] And he said to those who stood by, take the mina from him and give it to the one who has the ten minas. And they said to him, Lord, he has ten minas.
[3:20] I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.
[3:39] Now this is God's word. And we pray he blesses the reading of it. Let me pray as Stan comes up. Lord, we thank you for your word.
[3:50] We pray that your spirit would open our heart to receive your word. And we thank you for Stan for preparing to speak from your word. Please help us to hear.
[4:01] And please help us together to learn. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you very much, Cal. And thank you for reading that. I arrived this morning and the print in your Bibles is so small.
[4:12] There is no way I was ever going to be able to read that. So Cal did me a favor and read the passage. But, well, let me encourage you to keep your tiny print Bible open in front of you.
[4:25] It will help you as we go through this this morning. And, you know, as we turn to this this passage this morning, you know, I'd like to point out that the parable of the Tim Minas is an allegory.
[4:40] And Jesus' parables were always designed so that people were able to initially relate to the story in a familiar context.
[4:51] Scenes and stories from everyday life. And then as the story moved on, it became clear, at least to some, that there was another deeper meaning into the story itself.
[5:03] Something running along parallel with the obvious storyline. And this is how allegory works. And Jesus always used allegory in his parables to teach spiritual truth because his teachings were new.
[5:18] They were unfamiliar to the people. And what is truly compelling about this story is that everyone is in it. Everyone listening to Jesus on that day and everyone here in this room is in the story.
[5:32] And as the story reaches its climax, it's really not hard to figure out which person we are, which person we are in this story.
[5:43] Because there are really only three possibilities. There are the faithful servants of the nobleman. There are the false servants. And there are the rebel citizens living in the country of the nobleman.
[5:57] And we're going to look at this passage this morning sort of in two parts. Firstly, in verse 11, we find out what is being thought by the people.
[6:08] Why Jesus is telling the parable. And then from verses 12 to the finish, we find out what Jesus actually taught. So before we look at that, let me just pray for us before we get into this.
[6:22] Heavenly Father, we come to you now with your word open in our laps. As we look at your word, Father, and we hear it this morning, we pray that you would grant us what we do not have and teach us what we do not know and make us what we are not.
[6:39] And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So our first section is what was thought. And that's verse 11. The first verse of our passage.
[6:52] As they heard these things, he proceeded to tell a parable. Because he was near to Jerusalem. And because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.
[7:04] You know, thankfully, Luke does make it very clear why Jesus is telling the parable. It's because his followers have false expectations about the appearance of the kingdom of God.
[7:16] They actually believe that it's imminent. And if you have your Bibles open to chapter 19, if you look back just a few verses to verse 31 of chapter 18, And you'll see that Jesus took the twelve aside and revealed to them not only was there not going to be a kingdom in the immediate future, but he spelled out for them what was actually going to happen in the next few days.
[7:41] Verse 31 says, You see, the crucifixion is just a few days away.
[8:09] And although Jesus knew this, and he had openly revealed it to the twelve, we find that in that very next verse, verse 34, well, they didn't understand any of it.
[8:21] They didn't understand a word of it. It actually says that the meaning of his words was hidden from them. And this idea of the people believing that the kingdom is soon, soon to be established, is not new or unique to Luke.
[8:37] If you think back to the feeding of the five thousand, that great miracle of the five loaves and the two fishes, immediately as it was over, John tells us that when the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, This is the prophet who is to come into the world.
[8:55] Perceiving them that they were about to come and take him by force and make him king, Jesus withdrew into the mountain by himself. You see, they wanted to make him king now.
[9:07] And even by the time we get to the book of Acts, even after they had seen the cross and the resurrection and all the reappearances, even as they gathered to witness the ascension of Christ into heaven, well, they had to ask one more time.
[9:23] Verse 6 of chapter 1 of Acts, they said, Lord, will you now at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? You see, it had been a part of their thinking for so long, and they were still asking.
[9:36] They simply couldn't get the immediate arrival of the kingdom of God out of their minds. Now, back in chapter 19, and it starts out with the story of Zacchaeus.
[9:48] And in the story, we see that Jesus explains his real purpose for coming, the reason for the incarnation. And it is not to set up an earthly kingdom.
[10:00] Verse 7, we see the people grumble about the fact that Jesus was the guest of the sinner's Ikea. So Jesus, in verse 10, walks out onto the porch and says to them, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
[10:15] Now, this is a key verse in your entire Bible. And we see, it's key because we see Jesus, the Lord himself, emphatically, unequivocally stating that his purpose on earth, his mission on earth, is to save, seek and to save sinners.
[10:37] And Zacchaeus was a prime example of that, wasn't he? And still, even after such a straightforward statement of why he came, the people were still unable to grasp that his mission was not about to set up an earthly kingdom.
[10:54] You see, it's from the human point of view, to expel the Romans and to reestablish Jewish rule was just the desire of their hearts. And Luke also tells us there in verse 11 that the closer they got to Jerusalem, the more focused on the kingdom their minds were becoming.
[11:14] I mean, these Jewish followers, their minds were becoming more and more focused on it. He says that Jesus told the parable because he was near to Jerusalem. And importantly, this was the time of the Passover.
[11:28] The Passover feast was drawing closer. And you remember, that was the purpose of his final journey here, was to arrive in Jerusalem at the start of the Passover, which was the celebration of the great exodus from Egypt.
[11:42] And for the Jewish people, this brought to mind liberation from slavery, moving into the promised land, God leading them and taking them to the promised land. So the whole situation stirred their minds and their emotions to think the kingdom could be coming right now.
[11:58] The time for liberation for the Romans was now. And this is why Luke writes in verse 11, he proceeded to tell a parable because he was near to Jerusalem.
[12:11] That's the place. And because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately, they just couldn't get it out of their minds. So that is what was thought.
[12:23] So let's now look at what Jesus taught. And he begins the parable there. There are three points that we want to look at about the kingdom. Firstly, before the kingdom arrives, he must go away.
[12:38] Secondly, there would be a time of waiting before he returns. And thirdly, there would be a day of reckoning when he returns. And as we said, everyone is in the story.
[12:51] Everyone plays a character. But first, Jesus must go away. Verse 12, he begins the story. A noble man went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return.
[13:07] Now, this idea of the noble man leaving to a far country to receive his kingdom is something that people would have understood. Because in the Roman Empire, the ultimate king of the entire empire was the emperor.
[13:23] And whenever a king wanted to take his place on the throne of any country that was subordinate to Rome, well, they would have to travel to Rome, be invested, have their powers authorized by the emperor.
[13:34] And Jesus also uses a story here that was not only familiar to the people, but actually happened in his own lifetime. This was fairly recent news.
[13:46] The historian Josephus tells us that in 40 B.C., Herod the Great, he was the Herod who massacred all the baby boys in an attempt to kill Jesus. He took his trip to Rome to be invested.
[13:59] And later, when Herod the Great died, he left his kingdom and his will to his sons. And one of the sons, Archelaus, inherited Jerusalem and Jericho.
[14:11] And when the time came for him to set off to Rome to have his powers authorized, he went away. But there were a lot of people who were not that happy, not happy at all about Archelaus being on the throne, because, well, he was just like his father.
[14:27] He was a tyrant and a murderer and a liar. So while Archelaus went to Rome by boat, the rebels, who were opposed to his investiture, sent 50 representatives in another boat to appeal to the emperor not to invest Archelaus.
[14:47] Well, you can imagine how that worked out. The emperor ignored the rebels, installed Archelaus, and these rebels felt the full force of his anger when he got back to his country.
[15:00] So, Jesus is not using an abstract illustration here. In fact, he's using one that is rooted in news that everyone listening to him would have known about.
[15:11] And the underlying theme in the parable here is not too hard to understand. Jesus is describing himself as the nobleman. The nobleman attends a faraway country, faraway being the emphasis here as the journey implies a prolonged period of time.
[15:30] And then the nobleman goes to the greater king to receive his kingdom. And following his authorization, the nobleman returned to reign and to judge all his subjects who fall into one of those three categories, the faithful servants, the false servants, or the rebels.
[15:48] So, Jesus is saying to them, like the nobleman, he must leave for an indefinite period of time, but he's going to return to rule his kingdom.
[16:00] And the point here is that after the cross, we know that Jesus ascended into heaven. So, Jesus will go away. He will be invested, and he is saying there is a period of waiting before he returns.
[16:16] So, the nobleman knows he will be away for some time. And in preparation for the trip, verse 13, he calls on his servants to explain their responsibilities while he's away.
[16:29] And we're told he gave 10 minas to 10 servants, or one per servant, for them to engage in business while he's away. It's not a huge amount of money.
[16:41] It's about three months worth of salary. So, still, it's not a lot, but it's a substantive amount for them to be managing on his behalf. And we should note here how this differs from the parable of the talents in Matthew 25.
[16:56] In the parable of the talents, you'll remember the emphasis is on the differing gifts and abilities the Lord's servants receive. Now, the Holy Spirit gives us talents and abilities to all believers, but they come to us in different proportions, differing skills, different levels of ability.
[17:15] I mean, some have the talent of administration, some preaching, some hospitality, some teaching. If you think about Barnabas, his was encouragement, as Cal was talking about this morning.
[17:26] And it's obvious that we don't all have the same talents. However, here in the parable of the minas, each person received the same, one mina.
[17:39] In other words, each received the same capital and the same amount of trust from the master. He was an equal opportunity employer. Now, the emphasis here is on the citizens of the master's kingdom.
[17:53] And they are to get on with his interests, his business in the world while he's away. And what did Jesus plainly tell us was his business, his mission, his interest in the world?
[18:06] Well, in 1910, he said he came to seek and to save the lost. So what is the mina in the story? What does it represent? What is it that all believers have in common?
[18:20] Well, you see, the mina represents the gospel, the good news. And we are not all equally gifted, but we are all equally given the gospel.
[18:33] The word mina simply suggests a sum of money. But the important thing here is not so much the amount as the fact that each of the ten servants received exactly the same amount.
[18:46] The mina represents the gospel, the good news. And however varied our skills and our abilities are, we all have the same gospel to impart, don't we? I mean, the most brilliant preacher in the most prestigious pulpit in the world does not have a better gospel than the most inexperienced, fumbling preacher in the smallest, furthest outpost in the world.
[19:11] The message of the gospel is the same, isn't it? And it's easy to see the vast differences between all of us in terms of our background and experience, our schooling, our parenting, our siblings, our friends, just general life experience.
[19:29] No two followers of Christ are exactly the same. In fact, many of us are exactly the opposite. And still we all receive the good news in exactly the same portion.
[19:41] And along with our portion of the gospel comes the responsibility to invest it in kingdom business, to make the capital investment that Jesus has provided for every one of us.
[19:57] If you think about Matthew 28, Jesus says to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you to the end of the age.
[20:17] So you see, like the nobleman in the story, the command of the Lord Jesus to his people before his departure is, engage in my business until I return.
[20:30] Engage in my business until the end of the age. And what is his business? It is Luke 19, 10, isn't it? To seek and to save the lost.
[20:41] So when you think of having the mina placed in your hands, think of being entrusted with the truth of God, regardless of your location, or your situation, or your talents.
[20:56] Think of being entrusted by Jesus himself to engage in his business. Entrusted to invest your mina on behalf of Jesus to enrich and benefit his kingdom.
[21:11] I mean, isn't that really amazing? I mean, imagine, all of the Christians there have ever been throughout the ages, and in this parable we're told that the Lord Jesus has purposed that we should, each and every one of us, have our own mina, and with it our own exclusive responsibility to invest in.
[21:34] And how should we see this amazing responsibility? Well, we should see this as an opportunity to live a life that honors our absent king. An opportunity to respect him, to show our love for him, to show him that we can be trusted, that we are trustworthy.
[21:54] The noble man supplies the capital investment and says, when I return, we will see what you have done. And it will tell us who you are.
[22:08] If you love me, it will tell us if you do love me. It will tell us if you respect me. And it will tell us how trustworthy you are. So the king made his final preparations there in verses 12 and 13.
[22:22] He instructs his servants and he sets off. And there starts the period of waiting, which brings us to the third point. When the king returns, there will be a day of reckoning.
[22:37] Now, we mentioned earlier that there are only three types of people in this story. And as we come to verse 14, we find the first class of people we meet are the rebels. Those who, verse 14 says, are the citizens who hate the king.
[22:51] I mean, this is an unmistakable parallel with Archelaus. And no one listening that day would have missed it. Verse 14, the rebels sent a delegation after him saying, we do not want this man to reign over us.
[23:08] In other words, they appealed to the greater king not to appoint the noble man as their king. However, note the words used here. His citizens hated him.
[23:19] Jesus chose his words very, very carefully when he used these parables to teach. So note how it says they are his citizens. Everyone in the kingdom is his citizen, aren't they?
[23:33] Everyone belongs to the kingdom. I mean, you may hate Christ. You may reject Christ. You might even be an atheist or a Satan worshiper.
[23:44] But he still owns you. He is still sovereign over you. I mean, some people think that if they reject Christ, that he has nothing to do with him. But even if you reject Christ, he still has everything to do with you.
[23:59] Even if you have nothing to do with him, you passively ignore him even. He still has everything to do with you. You see, it's actually out of your hands. You were born under his jurisdiction.
[24:13] You live in his world. All things were made through him and by him and for him. He is the king of the universe. He is the sovereign with full authority.
[24:25] So for those who hate the king, who actively hate the gospel, those who reject the gospel or even simply passively ignore the gospel, they will nonetheless at some point face Jesus as their king, as their judge, and sadly, sadly for many of them, they will face him as their executioner.
[24:49] In verse 15, the return of the noble man symbolizes the second coming, the return of Jesus. It will be sudden and secret.
[25:01] It will bring separation and it is an absolute certainty. And as the story goes, when he returns, the day of reckoning arrives and he calls his servants to account.
[25:14] Now notice the extraordinary thing about the story is that the reward of these faithful servants is out of all proportion to the relative small amount of money that the king gave to them to manage.
[25:27] The first servant comes and he says in verse 16, Lord, your mina has made 10 minas more. And the king says, well done, good servant.
[25:38] Because you have been faithful in very little, see he realizes it's only a small amount. Because you have been faithful in very little, you should have authority over 10 cities. He's multiplied the mina 10 times and he gets authority over 10 cities.
[25:54] In the same way, the second servant has made five, his original stake. And well, he's offered a well done and given charge of five cities. I mean, these are huge rewards that have all proportion to the faithful obedience of the servants.
[26:10] And we should also note the humility of these servants. I like this. Look how the servant says, Lord, your mina has made. He's not saying, hey, Lord, look what I did for you with your mina.
[26:23] No, he's saying, your mina did this. I simply put it to work as you asked me to. But you're the one who actually created the capital. You created the environment, the situation, the trust.
[26:36] And it's your power and your influence and your mina. I just took it away and it worked. You see, I think there is something we need to emphasize here.
[26:48] We need to notice that all the power is actually in the mina. All the power is in the gospel. Not in our ability to communicate it. We don't need to be powerful or impressive people because we have a powerful and impressive gospel.
[27:06] And it's, well, I was going to say usually, it's really always in our accepting our weaknesses and using the gospel strength that we actually begin to see a return on our efforts.
[27:19] We may be channels through which the word flows, but channels is all we are. Channels to reach other people, but the real power is in the gospel.
[27:32] So make a mental note of this and nothing else. Look what your mina has made, not look at what I did with your mina.
[27:44] Now, just as there are rebels, so Jesus says there are also faithful servants and false servants. And so we come to the false servants there in verse 20. Then another came saying, Lord, here is your mina, which I kept laid away in a handkerchief, for I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man.
[28:05] I mean, look at that. He never invested his mina. He never engaged in business on behalf of his Lord. And notice how he accuses the king.
[28:18] He says that, well, it's the king's fault he never invested it, because he was afraid of the king. The servant says to the king in verse 21, you take what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow.
[28:33] In other words, he's saying to the king, you're a thief. You take what isn't yours. And his false servant's mistake, you see, is to use his own mind, his own judgment that the king's demands as an excuse for his disobedience.
[28:52] Think about that. He uses his own judgment of the king to justify his disobedience. And the king exposes the lameness of his excuse in verse 23.
[29:06] Well, even if what you say is true, if you really feared me, well, why didn't you at least take it to the bank so I could collect it with interest when I return?
[29:16] I'd at least get something for my money. And he's saying even a small amount of interest would have been something to benefit me in my kingdom. You see, there was no failure on the part of the miner.
[29:30] It wasn't counterfeit. It wasn't worn out. It hadn't had its edges shaved off as they used to do with coins in those days. And everyone else who traded with it had made some profit.
[29:44] But the truth is, this servant didn't really care about the king or his kingdom. He had no concern for the exaltation of the king or even for his own trustworthiness.
[29:58] He doesn't use his mind and not for himself, not for anyone else. In fact, this man is a fake. He's a false servant.
[30:09] He really doesn't serve the king or the king's interest. In fact, well, he doesn't serve at all, really, does he? And we see people like this all too often. You know, they say they believe in Jesus, but then they also say, well, he makes demands on them and their lives that are just too great, simply too hard to live with.
[30:31] They want a more worldly sort of view from Jesus. They want him to see how they see the world. I mean, they know the gospel. They've even held the gospel in their own hands, but they never believed enough to commit themselves to the king.
[30:49] And in the end, well, they say, I owe him nothing. He's asking far too much for me, and especially when he's not put anything in it himself.
[31:02] And you know, if I live for him in his will, it will steal my pleasure. And to sacrifice the passions and the pleasures this world has to offer is too great, and I simply cannot commit to that.
[31:15] And besides, what has he ever really done for me anyway? You know, so what happened to this false servant?
[31:25] Well, the king took the mina away from him, and he gave it to the servant who already had ten. And the people standing around said, Lord, what are you doing?
[31:36] He's already got ten minas. Well, the king knew that. However, it did strike me that that response is so human, isn't it? We always seem to want to put the lid on grace.
[31:51] I mean, why can't we just rejoice when we see someone getting more than we think they should deserve? Nonetheless, what Jesus is saying here is whoever makes faithful use of what they are given, they will receive more blessing and a rich welcome in the kingdom of heaven.
[32:12] However, those who don't, well, they will appear before the bar of God's judgment, poor, naked, exposed, without excuse on the day of his return.
[32:26] And here's where commentators are not really able to agree. Was this man saved and allowed into the kingdom, although stripped of power, position, privilege?
[32:38] So as by fire, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3, I mean, you're standing there next to them in heaven and you can smell the smoke coming off their clothes and their hair and their eyebrows are singed?
[32:49] Or was this man not saved at all and shut out of the kingdom? Well, as I said, these great Christian theologians have debated this for centuries, so I'm not going to make my own decision here this morning.
[33:04] But there are three points that always stick out in this to me. The servant obviously didn't know the Lord. He called him a thief and an unjust master.
[33:17] And Christ says to the servant in verse 22, you wicked servant, which is something I cannot imagine the Lord Jesus saying to any of his children, no matter how prodigal we may be.
[33:31] And thirdly, he stripped him of the minor. He had the gospel taken away from him. The servant's opportunity to apply the gospel to his own life and to offer it to others, well, the time had expired.
[33:45] The master had returned and the time for investment of the gospel is over. I mean, still, regardless, though, of whether we think this man is in heaven or was shut out, it's not really the issue because I think the real issue here is that this should inspire us to ask or to assess, anyway, what is success in the kingdom of God?
[34:12] And how effective are we being in the investment of the Lord's capital that he has given to us? And finally, the king deals with the rebels, those citizens of the kingdom that never wanted him to rule, those who had sent their message of rejection of him, loud and clear.
[34:36] Verse 27, but as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.
[34:46] There's not really much to explain there. That word slaughter in the original language means exactly the same thing that it means today. The rebels are destroyed in the presence of Christ by his personal command.
[35:06] So, herein, we see that the Lord will one day make a distinction between the faithful, the false, and the rebellious. And as we see the distinction, we should also note that there is an invitation to devotion here.
[35:23] I mean, would you like to be more devoted to Christ? I certainly would. I mean, would you like to have a deeper, experiential grasp of what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 6 when he writes, you are not your own.
[35:38] You were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God. And would you like to experience a more tangible, heartfelt urgency from the realization that our lives are all burning out fast and our days for investment of our mind are becoming fewer and fewer and fewer.
[36:03] And you see, I'm not saying that everyone must go out and preach or teach or be a missionary or go over to the shopping precinct and it costs absolute strangers.
[36:16] Some people are called to do that, but not everyone is. However, all of us are called to live out the gospel in our lives so that others might see, even if it's only just a spark of the hope that we have.
[36:34] We're all called to make that investment. People should see the gospel operating in our lives. The Lord Jesus went on his journey to the greater king.
[36:46] He ascended to the right hand of God, but he has left us with his word of truth. He's left us with his gospel, the minor, not for our own personal use so much, but as he said, for the lost generation that we see all around us.
[37:05] And on the return of the Lord Jesus, we're going to be accountable of how we used it, not collectively, not so much as a church, but individually, how we invested it.
[37:18] And the ultimate question at the return of Christ, when we see him face to face, is what did you do with my minor? I mean, there are so many worthwhile things that we can devote ourselves to, families, fellowship, church service, but still in the end, there is only one overriding question that the Lord is going to ask you about on the day of reckoning.
[37:47] Did you fulfill the one reason that Jesus has left his church on earth while he stays away? Namely, to get the minor invested into the world.
[38:00] let's pray together, shall we? Father, we recognize this morning that our lives have been purchased, that they are passing, and because of your spirit, they are powerful.
[38:17] We ask and pray that the fact that they are purchased may be a thought that is renewed in our hearts. Because our lives are passing, passing so quickly, that we might be diligent and aware of our shortening time scale in which to serve the gospel, to serve our king.
[38:35] And we pray that we might invest wisely and well, and to this end, we pray for your help this morning as individuals, as a fellowship, and as your church.
[38:47] And we ask for this in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.