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Welcome to worship today at Morrison Zion Lutheran Church. We exist to glorify God. We have set out to do this by gathering around the Gospel so that we may grow in the Gospel and go to others with this Gospel.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from Jesus Christ, our Lord:
Maybe you’ve seen this show before called Mad Money. It has this guy, Jim Cramer, who is on one of the financial shows and is kind of famous because he has crazy buttons and he is all about investing and the stock market and making the right investments. He’ll get excited about what to buy and what to sell. It’s kind of crazy and the show is called Mad Money. Maybe you’ve seen it on at the store or maybe you’ve watched shows like that on some of the financial channels. But what is interesting is there was a clip recently that I saw that, if you know how the economy has been recently and how investments have gone, a few things that people have invested in haven’t done so well. There is a clip of him which is not on his show, that Mad Money show, but he is with a bunch of other investment gurus and he is sitting there and he is talking about this stock Meta. Meta is Facebook, but they’ve changed their name to Meta because they are going to do the whole Metaverse virtual reality thing. He had told everyone to keep investing in Facebook and this Meta but it just keeps dropping. One day it dropped 26%, just in one day. And here he is, sitting with these other guys, and he is practically in tears and emotionally a wreck because he had given such bad advice. He had told everyone, “Invest in this great stock. It will come back up. It will. It’s great. It always comes back up,” and it hadn’t. He was devastated because he had made such a bad investment and told so many other people to make this bad investment.
In our parable today we see Jesus speaking about investing; how we invest in this life, our time, and how we value our Savior and our God. He is telling us to make timely investments. As we look at this parable, we’re going to see a few different things about where this investment comes from, how we invest our life, and what we should really focus on, on this Last Judgment Sunday.
A key for looking at this question of investment—sometimes we’re always focused on time; timing things exactly right. When Jesus starts talking about this parable, the background is that He was on His way to Jerusalem. This is not very far from when He is going to be arrested. The people are asking Him, “Is the kingdom going to appear at once?” That’s what happens in Verse 11. They are saying, “When is the kingdom going to come? When is the last day going to be? Is it going to come soon? Is it going to happen at once?” So Jesus tells this parable.
If you notice, is it really anything about “when” in this parable? Does He tell us anything about times or signs? No. Just like Jesus does in His fashion, He takes a question and He kind of takes the question and diverts it to the important thing. The most important thing He wants us to see first is not when but how. When we think about the last days, when Judgment Day is coming, He doesn’t want us to be so concerned about when but how to live our lives.
If you think about the End Time, when is the End Time? We’ve been in the End Times technically for 2,000 years. This was spoken at Jesus’ time and still the time that He is speaking about, so we are still in that “when” and we’re not so concerned about when and when that could happen. End Time for us is subjective to when that last day for us is—when God calls us home. Yes, God could come back while we’re still around, but His focus is not when but how we should live and what we should focus on as we’re living. So as He is asked this question of “when will this kingdom appear,” He is going to focus not on when but how they should live and how they should invest what they have.
If we look at the parable, it’s interesting to look at what they have. In Verse 12 it starts out, “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’” Where did they get this investment? Was this something that they had worked so hard to gain, that they had been slaving away and this was their retirement fund? No. It simply says that this king, this ruler came and gave each of these servants a mina. It was a gift.
It’s so important when we talk about all of this, when we talk about how we serve and how we live, that we start out with the key point that all of it is a gift. If we flip it around and we put our work and what we earn first or what we do first, then we mess it all up. We have to see that it’s all a gift. He makes it clear. It’s just a short little line in this parable, but it says that the master gave them this mina. It was a gift. That’s how it is with everything we have; most of all, that faith that we have and that grace that we have. It’s nothing that we can earn. If we flip it around at all, if we say that we earn His love or we can do anything to earn something from God, then we have thrown away all the grace that He gives. So we have to see that everything He gives us, especially grace and forgiveness, is a gift because He gave us Jesus. He gave us the greatest gift of all. He gave us His Son to redeem us and to forgive us of all of our sin; to love us in the midst of all things. When we start to look at Last Judgment and how we live our days until we are called to heaven, we have to see all our gifts, all our talents and especially our faith and the grace He gives us are all a gift.
Then the question is how? How do we handle that gift? What do we do with what He has given us?
What I find interesting first though is the people’s reaction to this servant. In Verse 14 it said, “But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’” What is this talking about? What time is this talking about? Certainly at this time Jesus is running into opposition and He is their King but they don’t want Him to be their King. They even go to the lengths to crucify Him because He said He was God and their King. Pilate mocking them said, “King of the Jews” (John 19:19) as He was crucified. But I want to put a little different thought to this of when this might be.
This ruler came to the country and then he left and he was going to then be made king again. What is that kind of a picture of? Maybe the world today—Jesus came into this world and we know He is going to be made King but we’re waiting for that time to come. Jesus came, was crucified, rose again, and He ascended. Though He is guiding and protecting us, we still live in a world that is under attack. The devil is running amuck and leading so many people astray. There are many deceptions. Many people do not want Jesus to be their King. He is returning, He is going to be the Great King, but how many people want anything to do with that? So many people are rejecting Jesus and faith and they don’t think He’s real or they think His teachings are ridiculous. I think we’re living in that time right now where these subjects hated Him and did not want Him to return. So what do we see? He was made king, however, and returned home. We know that Jesus is also going to return.
We see how the first two acted with their investment. They had this one mina and one turned it into ten. The next had one and turned it into five. But we see another one, another one who says that he was afraid. In Verse 20: “Then another servant came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.’ His master replied, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant!’” Is it true that this master was a hard man? I think it’s an interesting question because the master (when he comes back) says “I’m going to judge you by YOUR words.” He is saying, “This is how you feel about me, so this is how it goes.” I think what has happened is there are people that hate this man, this master, and they deceived people into saying who he was.
If you look at our world, there are many deceptions. There are many things that are leading people astray. There are many deceptions and many opportunities. But here we see the deception. The deception that people are saying about who Jesus is and who God is. “God can’t really love you.” “The Bible is just nonsense.” “The Bible has all these great teachings but they are pretty old-fashioned. We don’t have to follow those. What you should really follow is your own heart because the way to be true to yourself is to follow your deepest desires and hold to them. That’s the way to really be true.” What is that? That’s deception. We know that our hearts are broken and that from our hearts and from inside come all sorts of evil desires and deceptions that lead us astray and lead others astray. We’re filled with this world that has so many deceptions that try to lead us away from God and lead us from investing in the right ways.
I think there are so many opportunities. The first one came and he took his investment and he was very wise, and the second the same. What opportunities are there out there for you to invest what God has given you? Think about those gifts, that grace He has given you. Think about all the gifts and talents He has given you. There are so many opportunities.
But then we have to wonder, what are we doing with these investments? We see what the one man did who hid that money away. He buried it. Have we buried our investment, or are we investing it to get more? What happens when we bury our investment; when we take that grace and forgiveness, that Gospel that has been planted in us either at Baptism or through faith in God’s Word that was spoken to you? Do you know people that take that investment and put it aside?
Maybe that’s something that you’re struggling with, with all the distractions in the world. There are so many things to be focused on and so many things that can take our time and say “You need to invest in this.” “Your kids need to invest in this sport or this thing.” “You need to put your time into this work or this hobby.” None of these things are bad. These things are all gifts, but if we’re not investing in God and His Word, then we are burying that gift that we’ve been given. And what can happen?
It says here he told them to “Take his mina away from him and give it to the one who has ten minas.” ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘he already has ten!’ He replied, ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’” Notice the one who has nothing—he doesn’t even say that he has that one mina left when he says that. He has buried it. He doesn’t care about it anymore. It’s so easy for us to get so distracted and invest in so many different things, but those are bad investments. Those are things that promise great returns and rewards, but we know that they are really empty.
But what IS a great investment? When we invest in what God has given us, when we grow in His Word and His mercy and His love, when we learn about the love that He has for us, and then we share that with others. What better investment can you make in your kids than making sure that they know of God’s grace and mercy and know why we come to church? It’s not just something that we do on Sundays or that livestream that we watch. Why do we do that? We invest in it because this is what really matters. Here you learn you are loved and forgiven. In the rest of the world you are hearing deceptions and things that have some good things, but they don’t lead to the eternal rewards—that eternal investment that can never be taken away.
So think about how we can invest; how you can serve and love others by showing the love of Jesus to others as well. By loving your family, by serving them, by serving people at work and out in the community, and having the opportunity to invest in them and share Jesus because God has truly invested in you. He gave that greatest gift. What is more valuable than His only Son? God truly loves you, more than anything! He wants you to be with Him and wants you to invest in Him, knowing that the blessings He gives, that one He gives will multiply into ten when we are focused on Him and sharing that message with others. What greater investment? It’s an investment that is eternal. It’s an investment that can never fade. Amen.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7.) Amen.