「忠実な良い僕の条件」 十月第一主日礼拝 宣教 2024年10月6日
マタイによる福音書 Matthew 25章14〜30節 牧師 河野信一郎
Good morning, and welcome to October in the year 2024. We thank God for the opportunity to praise and worship with you this morning. Lunch will resume today, and we are confident that God will give us many blessings this month. Please return to church on Sunday.
Well, on the afternoon of the 29th, the youth of TGM Church, Okubo Church, and the youth of the Tokyo Association gathered in this chapel, where praise was cheerfully offered and we listened to God speak to us together. Afterwards, we had a friendly fellowship in the first floor hall. As I would like to show you a few pictures, the youth of TGM Church, about 50 people, were overwhelmed by the full complement of the worship team, praise team, dance team, interpretation team, and projector team. It was a time of great stimulation and learning, and we are grateful to the Lord for giving us this wonderful opportunity. My hope and prayer for Pastor H and I is that this blessed meeting will build on itself and become an even richer exchange, creating a new movement, or perhaps a new swell, as we work together in unity to show God’s glory. Please pray for us.
Until last month, we have been asking, “What is God’s will for each of us? In October, we would like to hear from the Bible how we should show God’s glory, love our neighbors, and build up the church, the body of Christ, by using what God has entrusted to each one of us, and what kind of mindset we should have. We hope to hear from the Bible together how we should walk in this way. If we believe that God is our God and Jesus Christ is our Savior, then we belong to God and to the Lord Jesus. Jesus is our Lord and God is our Master. The person who faithfully does what the master wants is a good and faithful servant of the Lord.
Now, I would like to ask you all a question that is out of the ordinary. There are conflicts and wars going on all over the world today. Not only are many missiles and drones being fired into the battlefields, but also millions of landmines are being planted. Landmines have been called “the devil’s weapon” and have contaminated the land of more than 78 countries around the world as a weapon of indiscriminate killing. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people die each year from these weapons, and 80% of the casualties are civilians.
You are a removal heavy machine built to remove those mines. Your mission is to remove as many mines as possible and reclaim the land where people can live in peace. But if you say, “No, I don’t want to do such a dangerous thing. I want to live in comfort. If you say, “I want to live only for myself,” what would happen to the world?
That is not possible. They are designed, manufactured, and dispatched to contaminated land solely for the purpose of clearing landmines. If they cannot fulfill the responsibilities entrusted to them, they would be scrapped and scrapped. This may have been a rather radical analogy, but I have used such an introduction to warn those who may be falling asleep, but Jesus speaks of very serious things.
Now, this morning we want to listen to the words of Jesus with Matthew 25:14-30 as our text, and the first thing to remember is that here Jesus speaks this parable to His disciples just two days before His death, just two days before His death on the cross. This is a time of tension. In the midst of all this, Jesus uses a parable to speak about the Kingdom of Heaven.
Why does he talk about the Kingdom of Heaven? Because the Lord God is inviting us to the Kingdom of Heaven. And there is one condition for entering that Kingdom, and that is to live according to the words of Jesus. Jesus is not asking us to be like “slaves” in order to do so. He expects us to walk as “good and faithful servants,” and He teaches us what it means to be good servants who serve their masters faithfully, and what conditions are necessary for us to be faithful servants.
14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.
It is a story about a master with considerable wealth who entrusts us with his precious possessions. Here it says, “called his servants,” and we too are called by the Lord Jesus. It has the purpose of working for the Lord Jesus. Whether or not we recognize that call and expectation of Jesus will radically change the way we live as Christians. As we stay connected to Jesus, we can know the mission and purpose of our lives, which is to be forgiven, saved, and kept alive to serve and live not for ourselves but for the Lord Jesus and my neighbor.
In verse 15, talents are deposited “according to the strength of each one”. Each of us has gifts entrusted to us by God. Each of us has different gifts, but since we have works entrusted to us by God, there should be differences, and we are not to compare our gifts with those of others and be happy or sad, feel superior or inferior, or be jealous. It is important to receive grace gratefully and use it for the Lord.
Also, being entrusted with something by God means that it is not ours, that we will return it to God someday, and that we must take good care of it while it is entrusted to us. We are entrusted with something because God has a definite will, plan, and care for it, but we also know that God has entrusted it to us in trust. The parable is told to teach us not to reject what God has given us or entrusted to us, but to receive it gratefully and use it.
Now, do you know how much one talent is worth? 1 talent is 6,000 denaries, and 1 denari is the equivalent of one day’s salary for a worker, so it is the equivalent of 6,000 days’ salary, which is about 24 years’ salary if the worker works 250 days a year. If we calculate, 2 talents is 120 million yen, and 5 talents is 300 million yen. The fact that such a huge amount of money was entrusted to us shows that our master trusted us that much. That is how much he invested in us.
Everyone may want to live up to this expectation, or they may not want to be bound by it, but what about the three of us who were expected by our masters to do so? They made twice as much money as they had received. But the one who was entrusted with one talent hid the money in the ground for fear of his master and did nothing else. He did not make good use of what he had been entrusted with.
God has entrusted us with gifts according to our abilities, but they are entrusted to us to use for the Lord. We are entrusted by God with all things. Life, body, health, ability, time, wealth, and so much more, but to use them only for ourselves would be like hiding them in the ground. God’s love has been given to us and we have been commissioned to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, but to keep God’s love and gospel only for our own happiness and in our own hearts is not God’s desire.
19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘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.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘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.’
Master praises the servant for making 5 talents and me for making 2 talents with the same words. This means that God is not interested in the amount of money we make, but in our sincerity, how faithfully and sincerely we make good use of what He has entrusted to us. God always looks back on those who are faithful and blesses them even more.
24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
The Lord Jesus says that those who hide their talents in the earth for fear of their masters will even have what they have taken away from them, and they will weep and gnash their teeth in the darkness, in other words, they will repent. Think back to the landmine removal heavy equipment. You all do not want to be regretful in life, do you? I think everyone wants to live a life without regrets.
What is important for us is not to look back on the past and regret, nor to worry about the future, but to live this day faithfully to God and faithfully to others. Remembering the promise we made to Jesus and our promise to follow him alone, we are to be good stewards of our lives, bodies, time, and wealth, which are given to us with blessings and plans, and to live for the glory of God and Jesus, for the salvation and happiness of people, and for the building up of the Church, the Body of Christ. We want to remember that at the end of our walk, there is the Kingdom of Heaven and God is waiting for us.
Jesus went the way of the cross to give us eternal life, and He gave His life for us. What can we do to respond to God’s love and Jesus’ sacrifice? Let us think about this, pray about it, and listen to the voice of the Lord during this new week.