"He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much. "
Luke 16:10
HE KNOWS YOU Read It:
Matthew 25:14-18
We're beginning our second week talking about stewardship, and we've got another fascinating passage of Scripture before us. Jesus' parable of the talents is a classic picture of New Testament stewardship. ardship. All the elements we talked about last week are here. We have the two parties, the master or owner and the steward or manager; a specific cific responsibility, the management of the owner's possessions; and the steward's accountability to the owner for how well he did the job. Now let me remind you that a talent was a measure of weight used to weigh precious metals. Suffice it to say that one talent of silver (that's what the word moneyin verse 18 means) was a tremendous amount of wealth. So for this man to have eight talents to distribute means he was awesomely somely wealthy. This is serious stuff. These three servants have very legitimate imate responsibilities to carry out, but notice that the master gives to them "each according to his own ability" (v. 15). What Jesus is saying is that this man knew his servants very well. He knew exactly what each of them could handle, the amount of pressure they could withstand, the level of their business savvy, and so forth. We know that this master stands for Jesus Himself, because Jesus says this story is a picture of His kingdom (see v. 1).
As a modern-day steward or manager of God's possessions, this fact ought to bring you some comfort today. The master in the parable didn't burden the one-talent guy with five talents. Now I'm not saying that all the people who have lots of stuff are the best stewards and that all those who have little must be the worst stewards. Some people acquire wealth by choosing gold over God. God knows us intimately and perfectly and deals with us according to that knowledge. That's comforting for two reasons: first, because you won't have to answer for what God has given another brother or sister; and second, you don't have to fret if God chooses to entrust more to another steward than He entrusts to you. You are responsible only for you. Think About It Whatever God has entrusted to you to manage, He has done so in the knowledge that you are capable of handling it.
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