Matthew 25

Matthew 25:24

What Is Your Talent? He also that had received the one talent.—Matthew 25:24.This is a sermon for the boys and girls who don’t sit at the top of their class in school and are quite sure that they never will sit there. That is just another way of saying that this is a sermon for “one talent” boys and girls. Who are they? They are the boys and girls who often think it isn’t worth while trying to do the best they can because they haven’t so many brains as some of their classmates and companions. They excuse themselves from doing anything because they can’t do everything. It is a grand excuse for laziness, and it is as old as the story of today’s text and older. It is as old as the world itself.Did you ever wonder why clever people are called “talented”?

The reason is exactly as old as today’s story. Christ told a tale about a certain great man who was leaving the country for some time and who gave to his servants before he left certain sums of money, telling them to trade with them in his absence. The first was given five talents, the second two, the third one. You know what happened in the end of the day. When, after a long time, the great man returned, he called these servants to him and asked them what they had done with the money. The five talent man had gained other five talents, the two talent man had added two to his two, but the one talent man brought his one talent back with a whining excuse that he hadn’t done anything with it but bury it in the earth, because he was afraid he might lose it if he tried to use it.Of course that story which Christ told was more than a mere interesting tale.

It was a story with a deep meaning. Christ was talking in a picture or parable, and He meant that God gives to every man, woman, and child in the world certain gifts, certain abilities.

He makes them able to do certain things and He expects them to use these abilities. He expects them to make the very most of them.This story of the talents took such a hold of people’s minds that gradually the picture word “talent”— which meant a weight of gold equal to £240—came to be applied to the God-given gifts and abilities about which Christ was really speaking. So that today, when we speak of “a man of many talents” or of “a talented man,” we don’t mean a man who owns a lot of gold but a man who is brilliantly clever and can do a great many different things exceedingly well.Now I have a great deal of sympathy with the boys and girls who have only one talent. It is hard not to be an all-round clever person; it is most discouraging to be always adorning the foot of the class. But there is no reason why you should not make a brilliant success of life all the same. Yes, I said brilliant, and I mean brilliant.

You can polish up that one talent of yours—and everybody has at least one talent—till it shines for all to see.I wonder what your special talent is! Do you know it?

You are not clever at grammar and history and geography, but you have a knack of getting your sums right every time, or you can read music as easily as other people read the ABC, or you can draw any given thing, or you can sing like a bird. Very well, work up these subjects till you excel in them.Perhaps you aren’t good at even math or music. But mother knows that, when you like, you can be a splendid help at home. You can cook or you can sew, or you can run errands, or you can tidy and dust and make the home comfortable and happy. Very good. Excel there.We might go on all day just naming the talents one can have.There is a certain famous London doctor of whom a man who was a class-fellow at the university said: “He was not what could be called a genius by any means.

I should not even say he was clever. He was a one talent chap; and his talent was being able to put his bits of information in their proper place.

He was methodical to a degree. Some of us have a lot to answer for. We might have done better. Give my old class-fellow an idea that was worth anything, and didn’t he work at it!”That man made the most of his talent for methodical work, and you see what he has come to. But I’ll tell you a much more wonderful story.You must all have heard of the American girl called Helen Keller. She is blind and deaf, and as a little girl she was very unhappy. She could understand nothing, not even what having a mother meant. But a wonderful teacher was sent to her, and through this teacher Helen learned about the world she could not see, about love and about God.

And now she is helping people who can see by telling them in books her beautiful thoughts. She is using the talent God gave her—her wonderful mind—and she is using it for others.And that brings me to the last thing I want to say to the one talent people. It is this. Use your talent for others; don’t polish it up merely for your own use. Polish it so that the world may be the brighter and happier for its shining. If you use it only for yourself, you won’t be doing much better than the servant who buried his talent in a field. The lord and master expected the servant to use the talent for him, and God expects us to use for Him the gifts He gives us. And the best way—the only way—to use them for Him is to use them for other people.

Have you got the idea? To come down to everyday things. If you are good at sums help that little fellow who can’t get his right. If you are good at sewing don’t just make dainty decorations for yourself, give mother a hand with sewing.Boys and girls, these are unimportant things—small things, did I say? In God’s sight there are no such things as small things.

Matthew 25:40

Inasmuch Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.—Matthew 25:40 (AV).Have you ever heard the story of the Fourth Wise Man? You have all heard of the Three Wise Men who came from the East to lay their gifts before the Babe in Bethlehem. Dr. Henry van Dyke tells us the story of the Other Wise Man, who arrived too late.His name was Artaban, and he lived far away in a city among the mountains of Persia. Like the other Wise Men he had studied the stars and the ancient prophecies. He knew that a great King would arise in Israel who would make life everlasting, and that His birth would be heralded by a star.

He knew that the time had come when this King should appear on the earth, and he had arranged with his friends—the other Wise Men—that, when the star appeared, they should wait for him ten days at the Temple at Borsippa in Babylonia, and that they should then set out together for Jerusalem to worship the great King.Artaban had sold his beautiful house and all that he possessed to buy three magnificent jewels for the King. One was a sapphire, “blue as a fragment of the night sky,” the second a ruby, “redder than a ray of sunrise,” the third a pearl, “pure as the peak of a snow mountain at twilight.”One night Artaban saw the star in the East and he set out immediately on his steed Vasda to join his companions at Borsippa.

It was a long journey across plains, and through fertile valleys, and over bare mountain passes; but he knew that by rising very early in the morning and riding late into the night he could just manage to accomplish it in time.On the evening of the tenth day Artaban found himself only three hours distant from Borsippa. Vasda was nearly exhausted, but the journey was almost completed and his friends would wait till midnight. As he was passing through a grove of date palms his horse suddenly hesitated and stopped. A dark object lay in the shadow of the last palm tree, and the Wise Man on dismounting discovered a poor sick Hebrew who had been overcome by marsh fever.And now a terrible struggle took place within the traveler’s breast. He knew that if he stopped to attend to the sick man he would be too late to join his companions. They would conclude that he had given up the quest and go on without him.

On the other hand, if he left the Hebrew lying helpless there he would certainly die. It was but for a moment that he hesitated.

Then he knelt down beside the sick man and did all in his power to relieve his sufferings. He moistened his lips and his brow and gave him medicine out of a phial which he carried in his girdle. All night long he stayed beside him and tended him, and in the morning the Hebrew was so far restored as to be able to sit up and look about him. When Artaban saw that the man was well enough to take care of himself, he laid beside him all the bread and wine that he had, and told him to go to Babylon when his strength was sufficiently restored. Then mounting Vasda he rode on towards Borsippa. But alas, when he reached the Temple he found it was as he had feared.

His friends had gone forward without him.Without money and without food Artaban could not hope to cross the desert alone. He must return to Babylon to buy provisions and a train of camels.

And to do this he must sell one of his precious jewels. Very reluctantly he parted with the sapphire, but he consoled himself with the thought that he had yet two gems to offer to the King.All this caused delay, and when at last Artaban reached Bethlehem he found that his companions had come and gone three days before. But he discovered something still sadder; for he was told that that same night Joseph of Nazareth had taken his wife and child away secretly, and it was whispered they were going to Egypt. The village was in an uproar, for an order had gone forth from Herod that all the children under two years of age should be slain, and Artaban gave his precious ruby to a soldier to save the life of a baby whose mother had shown him kindness.The Wise Man had now only one jewel left—the beautiful pearl—and his quest was still unfulfilled.He was very sad as he thought how he had spent for the sake of man that which was meant for God, but still he did not give up the search.He followed the young King down into Egypt, and long and patiently he sought for Him; but all in vain. Now and again he came to a place where He had sojourned some time before, but the Child Himself he never found. At length a wise old Hebrew told him that the Messiah must be sought for not among the great and wealthy but among the poor and lowly, the sorrowful and the oppressed.

So the other Wise Man visited the sick and the poor, the sad and the imprisoned. He fed the hungry, and clothed the naked, and healed the sick, and comforted the captive, but the Babe who was born in Bethlehem he did not find.And so the years sped on.

Artaban’s hair turned from black to silver, and from silver to snowy-white. His back grew bent, and his step became feeble. At length, thirty-three years after he had first set out, he came again to Jerusalem. It was the season of the Passover, but the city was in a state of great excitement, for two famous robbers were about to be crucified, and, between them, Jesus of Nazareth who had called Himself the “King of the Jews.” Hoping, and yet fearing, that this might indeed be the King whom he had sought half a lifetime, Artaban joined the crowd who were pressing on towards one of the city gates beyond which stood the hill where the men were to be put to death. Just outside he met a band of soldiers who were carrying away a young girl as a slave. And the girl, seeing Artaban’s kind face, cried out to him to save her.Then the Wise Man took out his last precious gift.

Never had it looked so lovely, so worthy of the King he had hoped to find. Must he indeed part with it?

Then he would have no gift left, and must give up his quest for ever. And yet he could not do otherwise. Trembling, he laid the gem in the hand of the slave that she might buy back her freedom. And even as he did so the ground shook with a mighty earthquake, the houses tottered, and a tile from a roof struck the old man a mortal blow on the forehead.As he lay dying in the arms of the girl he had rescued, a voice came through the twilight very small and still, and Artaban spoke as if in answer, “Not so, my Lord: For when saw I thee an hungered and fed thee? Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw I thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? When saw I thee sick or in prison, and came unto thee?

Three-and-thirty years have I looked for thee; but I have never seen thy face, nor ministered to thee, my King.”And the voice replied, “Verily I say unto thee, Inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me.”Then with one long last breath, Artaban’s journey ended. His gifts were accepted. He had found the King.Boys and girls, can you guess why I have told you this beautiful story? It is because it explains far better than twenty sermons could the meaning of those words of Jesus, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”We shall one day be judged, not by the amount of fame or wealth which we have gathered on this earth, but by the little kindly acts of love and service which we have done, or left undone, from day to day.Jesus Christ came down to earth so that He might share our joys and our sorrows, so that He might suffer our pains, so that He might die the death of a man. And He did all this because He loved us so dearly, and because, by suffering Himself, He could know best how to comfort and help us.And Jesus cares so much for all His children that when they are hungry, He is hungry, when they are sad, He is sad; and all who help or comfort His suffering ones, help and comfort Him.If you saw Jesus tired and hungry, wouldn’t you run to help Him? Wouldn’t you rejoice if He came to rest in your house?

Wouldn’t you be glad to give Him food and drink? Then remember that when you see a little sick child, Jesus is suffering in that child, when you see your mother tired with her day’s work, Jesus is weary too, when you meet a ragged, pinched boy on the streets, Jesus is cold and hungry.

Don’t turn away from them with an unsympathetic heart, for then you will be earning Christ’s rebuke, “Inasmuch as ye did it not.” But do what you can to help, and then you will indeed be helping Jesus, and you will one day receive His glad welcome, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in.”