The Parable of the Talents & Children

  Read Matthew 25:14-30

Read Proverbs 22:6

You have heard many perspectives on this parable from me over the past years.  This will not be a recap.  You might get a little review in the next service.

I will pose the question that I always offer.

What did you do with what God gave you?

I have charged you to examine your time, talents, and treasures.  These are standard stewardship categories.  I have challenged you to answer this question in the context of what did I do with the commission or the gospel that God gave me?

We have looked at how fear can debilitate if you take your eyes off of the Master and look at the storm. We have talked about how people overcome great obstacles when they set their fear aside.

This morning, I ask that you consider the question of what did I do with what God gave me in the context of children, both your own and those who somehow have been entrusted to us.

We are counseled to bring up a child in the way he or she should go—let’s call that God’s way.  The promise is that later in life they will still be living in God’s way.

The promise doesn’t say that somewhere along the way they won’t venture into the everything else, but that later on, they will be living God’s way.  That later on is when they are making just about all of their own life decisions.

But what about now? Did we put our Master’s trust in us to work?

Did we bring up our children in the way they should go so that they would produce a return for the Master?

What return?  Will their lives bring glory to God?

Let’s phrase it this way?  Did we bury the talent that God gave us—the gift of being parents—in the ground?  Who buries such a gift in the ground?

Let’s put it this way?  Did we ever have a day or two or a week or a month that we just needed to get through?  We just needed to survive.

Did we ever live a day where we didn’t teach our children something about God’s love and from his holy word?

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Does that cover what we should do?

It’s the option that the third servant might have taken.  He could have put his master’s money on deposit with the bankers and at least received a little interest from it.  It’s the minimum.

Anything less is burying our Master’s trust in the ground.

As parents, we look for the gifts and talents that God has placed in our children.  Mostly we look for all-star athletes, sometimes for academic gits, and sometimes for something in the arts.

It’s good that we know our children well enough to see what gifts and talents they have, but our charge is to bring them up in the way they should go—in God’s way.

What if you are blessed with a kid who will be the next Michael Jordan or Olga Korbut?  Will they know how to handle being blessed with such gifts?  Will success lead them into the everything else?

Our job as parents is not to make sure that our kid gets an athletic scholarship to OU or an academic scholarship to OSU, to get a real education.

Our job is to make sure that they know the Lord and his ways and that they seek him and his kingdom and his righteousness above all things.

If they are doing that, their God-given gifts will be manifested in such a way that brings glory to God.

That doesn’t mean that you stop coaching the baseball team or football team or helping out with the academic team.  It means that every day you invest God’s word in your children and every day you are an example of God’s love.

That goes for your own children and those that we get to borrow from time to time.  Our Wednesday night investments in setting children on a path that leads to God’s way is so important. That small amount of time may be the only time they hear about God’s love and his ways.

It also means that when the world has taken everything we have for that day and we just want to collapse into our beds, we ask ourselves if we invested in our children today.

Children, contrary to popular belief, you do not have to make this a difficult task for your parents.  That can mean do your chores and homework without being asked, but it also means more.

When they are so very tired and perhaps stressed and even frazzled, ask them to share something about God with you.

Ask them to help you with the memory verse.

Ask them to tell you about God’s love.

Don’t worry, God will give them the strength that they need to make this investment in you.

Amen.