The Parable of the Talents: What It Teaches Us About Stewardship

0:00 have you ever wondered what you would do if someone trusted you with millions of dollars to invest the parable of the talents teaches us powerful lessons about stewardship trust and making the most of what we've been given we'll explore this Timeless story and its surprising modern day value equivalents let's get some [Music] perspective hi welcome to Christian Financial perspectives my name is Matthew bario and I'm joined here with my um good friend and founder of CFA Bob Barber and today we're going to be talking about the parable of the talents as described by Jesus in Matthew

0:46 25 I am very excited about this today Matthew um what we're gonna we're going to take off in the next few weeks and we're going to really just we always talk about scriptural guidelines for finance but we're going to get to some of the parables and what they mean and you know Jesus spoke on stewardship more than any other subject in the Bible as a matter of fact a lot of the Bible biblical Scholars will say he spoke on Steward stewardship more than Heaven and Hell combined so this Parable is a very famous Parable it's a very long Parable so without further Ado we're going to get into this and I'm going to let you do the reading like I normally let Sean do the reading abely okay and so if you're wondering who's this Matthew well Matthew is with our firm and he's been

1:32 meeting with our clients for a year and comes with a lot of experience in the financial services business and loves the Lord and if you want to try to pronounce his name go for it go what how do you say it again Barrow Veo see Baro I'm getting better you are it took me about a year the first time you said it correctly all right let's read Matthew 2514 through3 for us here we go verse 14 for it is like a man about to go on a journey who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them to the one he gave five talents to another two and to another one each according to his own ability and he went on his journey and the one who received the five talents immediately went and did business with them and earned five more

2:20 talents in the same way the one who had received the two talents earned two more but he who received one Talent went away and dug a hole on the ground and hit his master's money now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled the accounts with them the one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents saying Master you have entrusted five talents to me see I have earned five more talents his master said to him well done good and faithful servant you were faithful with a few things and I will put you in charge of many things enter the joy of your master also the one who had received two talents came up and said Master you entrusted two talents to me see I've earned two

3:06 more his master said to him well done good and faithful servant you are faithful with a few things and I will put you in charge of many things enter the joy of your master now the one who had received one Talent also came up and said master I knew you to be a hard man reaping where you do not sew Gathering where you do not scatter seed and I was afraid so I went ahead and I hid your talent in the ground see you still have what is yours but his master answered and said to him you worthless and lazy slave uh did you know that I reap where I did not sew and gather where I did not scatter seed then you ought to have put my money in the bank and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest therefore take the talent away

3:52 from him and give it to the one who has 10 talents for to everyone who has more shall be given and he will have an abundance but from the one who does not have even what he does have shall be taken away and throw that worthless servant into the outer darkness in that place there will be weeping and nashing of teeth you know this uh reminds me of some of the scriptures that you read in Proverbs it is not messing around here and I did a lot of research and you did the research too and so did Sean about what is a talent and what was considered a talent and I think we thought we we came along with somewhere it could one Talent could be the amount of money that a

4:38 normal person would take to make 20 up to a Lifetime right so when he's giving a talent I think of it is what you're doing with your life as well but it is a monetary amount too and it's a lot y'all I mean it's a whole lot it can be anywhere today I mean it could be from 500,000 on up to 3 million it could be anywhere in between we really don't know but we know it's a lot and there are multiple interpretations in my research of this parable of the talents it's not just about investing agreed agreed yeah yeah Jesus is talking about uh the kingdom of heaven and when he's returning right in this Parable and he uses money because

5:24 he knows that we understand that but as you said a moment ago and we're going to review now there's many other lessons to be learned from this right what's what's one that you see yeah I think the biggest one is the first one we have listed there around stewardship right there are so many things that the Lord has entrusted us with whether it is things that we can see and touch like our family right or um our possessions but it's also the gifts that he has instilled in us right and are we using what he's given us to glorify his name absolutely yeah another one is that that inter interpretation that a lot of people see on the surface which it about investing and it's but it's the idea of growing what has been entrusted to us everything comes from God the Earth is

6:10 the Lords and everything in it you know Psalms 24:1 says that so what are we doing with what God is giving us and then that third one is uh accountability yeah very accountable well my goodness I mean you see what the guy with did with the one Talent right the master was upset right very upset well it's it's interesting because in in the Scripture it talks about how the master gave each according to their own ability right and so um the the master knows what they are skilled in yeah and his response is holding them accountable for you didn't you didn't use all your gifts and everything that I've that I've given you or that I know that you can do in order

6:56 to uh produce for me right kind of going with the talent is a whole year maybe a lifetime of of income so what did you do with the life that that God has given you and boy at the very end of that you know throw them out I mean that was pretty tough words again it reminds me of a lot of the things in in Proverbs and and that that comes to another area is consequences there are consequences uh as that when we've given responsibility for us to do something good with it and not just to go throw it in the ground and do nothing with what this life that God is giving us right yeah yeah yeah I think it's easy for us to to criticize the one Talent servant right it is it is um but we could all

7:42 fall in the same realm well well that well that's it I think a big part of the uh parab is for us to look at ourselves right and to see hey what are we doing between now what the Lord uh wants us to do before he returns yeah um and a lot of that requires us having faith and not subscribing to fear which we'll talk about here in a moment or so you know this is all about you know building the kingdom of God and and what are we how are we working you know with what God has put us here on on Earth to do now this gets in again like we get to the end here what we were just speaking of is is what was a talent worth and it as we say it was worth a lot a whole a whole lot and if you go do your own research you're going to find this uh

8:28 that that the numbers are outstanding but the this Parable like we said is not just about financial stewardship I I think it's important that one of my emphasis in this entire passage is he gave each according to their ability so he's not going to give us more than we can handle right amen right you know one of the things that again really stuck out to me is this concept of fear versus Faith right the one Talent servant really was fearful and he allowed that to drive his decision on what is he going to do with this money uh I just happen to be studying through Romans right now and Romans 8 uh 5 through a talks about um how we really should be submitting our whole Minds to the Holy Spirit and

9:13 thinking of things that are righteous not thinking of things that are sinful or of this Earth and um this is really a a great example of how it's obvious that the servant was subscribing to fear um not subscribing to faith in God and allowing the Lord to work through him we know from Romans 8 we know from Hebrews 116 that it's impossible to please God without faith and so um it's it's a much better outcome when we follow the five talent and the two Talent um servants and and do you know what we know that the Lord is calling us to do even if it's uncomfortable and even if it's beyond what we can see and understand

9:59 the one that got the two and the one that got the five came back and said look I've doubled it how long do you think that was between the time because you know the master went away and when we're thinking about a talent we're thinking about a lifetime as well MH you have a guest CU I have a guesstimate I'm just wondering you know I'm gonna put you on the spot here I I I have a feeling I know what your guesstimate is so I'm not going to piggy back off of it I'll let you what you say well you know we're going to we're going to cover this in the next few weeks about compounding in the rule 72 and God calls for us to handle money in a Biblical way so uh I don't believe they gambled it I don't believe they went and invested it in organizations that were tear down the kingdom of God I think that probably somewhere around the

10:46 seven to 10 year mark is when that master came back and see seeing what he had done because just based on my scriptural knowledge of investing in what it says in the Bible and and rule 72s it takes about 10 years for something to double MH you know 10 to 12 years so I think it was that amount of time it wasn't the next day it wasn't sure the following year so he gave them ample time to do something with what was given to them and I I don't like I say I don't think they would take anything and put it in immoral Ventures because you know 2 Corinthians 6:17 cost it says come out and be separate touch no one

11:31 clean thing and I'll welcome you so um this gets back to biblically responsible investing in an importance behind doing it the the right way and I also think that they invested across many different Ventures because Ecclesiastes 11:2 says give your portions a seven or eight cuz you do not know what disasters uh may come upon the land okay and there's some other scriptural guidelines in here too which and also that when we do invest we need to ask for wisdom you know Proverbs 1:7 speaks of asking for wisdom and James says the same thing if any of you lacks wisdom you should ask God get on your knees amen and that it wasn't about you know timing anything timing any kind of Market back then uh Proverbs 1311 says you know dishonest money dwindles

12:17 away but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow so I think they used very wise scriptural principles if you are looking at this from the investing point of view yeah the the last thing about the time in the market versus timing the market again going back to my comments earlier about fear um we we all know what happened in 2008 we all know what happened in 2020 and you and I have been uh serving in this capacity for long enough to unfortunately have experienced individuals who emotionally just subscribe to fear and abandon their long-term financial plan and we know that unfortunately that doesn't put in the best chance for long-term investment success right so there's also an

13:03 investment lesson here of not allowing uh panic and um other things that um the enemy wants to use to derail us but rather focusing on the long term and you know what the Lord wants for us well I think we've done a pretty good job of speaking about the parable of the talents I would invite you to go to God's word and read about this there's so much there so much Rich information and guidelines in God's word it just is exciting to me to always bring biblical guidelines of Finance when very few are talking about it today if You' like to contact us uh you can give us a call at 830

13:59 we'll see you soon thank you for watching if you want to see more videos just like this make sure to subscribe turn on notifications and like this video if you have questions you can visit our website call text us or comment below see you next time [Music]