God's Confidence in You

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Mike, if your dad ever hears that you made that comment, it won't be for me. But it's true. And he was fun. He still is. Appreciate the music, Jason. Very nice. On a day of reflection and memorial, remembering a good friend and father and Christian, the words that you were singing are very helpful to lead into what I wanted to talk about here this afternoon, and the sermon that I can give to you, because it comes down to a question that all of us need to ask ourselves, and this is a good day to do so, and that is, do we really understand the confidence that God has in us?

Do we appreciate the fact that He has called us, and He has offered to us eternal life, and He has confidence in us? Do we have confidence in Him and even in ourselves? Because we will need that to endure to the end, and that confidence that God has in us, and to understand our calling and why we are called now. With that thought, let me trace a little bit of a story for you and a little bit of history to help get into the Scripture that I want to talk about this afternoon.

A few months ago, Steve Myers and Scott Ashley and I had the opportunity to take a study tour in Italy. And I know many of us have gone to Italy for the Feast of Tabernacles and the site there. In fact, we were running around southern Italy near the site in Sibadia, where we had the feast site over the years. But one of the stops that we made, we were on a study tour in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul in his ministry and his time in Italy, and also seeking a deeper understanding of the Roman world.

We made a visit to a place called Herculaneum. Herculaneum is right next door to a place called Pompeii. We all know what Pompeii was. In 79 AD, Pompeii was covered over after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Well, neighboring city of Herculaneum was covered over, too. Most people going to Italy today only go to Pompeii, not as many go to Herculaneum. On this trip, we went to Herculaneum, which is really just kind of a big pit in the ground right now, as they uncovered the remains of part of that city.

We were walking its very narrow streets, and our guide stopped us in front of a home that was obviously the home of a well-to-do Roman citizen of that day, and of course with the volcanic ash. All that is perfectly preserved nearly as it was on that day when that volcano erupted. We were standing at the doorway, and he pointed out two other rooms on either side of the doorway of this home, this Roman home, that were just little rooms with doors opening out onto the street, and he explained to us those would have been the homes of, or not the homes, but shops belonging to the owner of the home out of which his slaves operated a concession, a business, a rather unusual situation to see a Roman senator in a nice home providing for two of his slaves to operate a business on his premise to the public right there.

And the story behind that is rather interesting because it goes into a story to understand the nature of slavery in the Roman world, and its application to a very important story, actually many lessons, but one very interesting story that we have from the Gospels of the parable that Christ gave. Slavery in the Roman world was a unique institution, quite a bit different from what we think of in our modern, more modern, western, or particularly American experience of slavery.

To be a slave in the Roman world meant that you had no rights, race was not the issue, it was just a matter that you got beat by the Romans, and you were bought or sold into slavery, and you lived a life being owned by someone else. It didn't matter what your skin color was, it didn't matter what your ethnicity was, bottom line, you weren't a Roman and you got beat, and you got sold into slavery.

But the Romans had a very enlightened view of slavery in their period. They recognized that not only were they property, but they could augment the wealth of their owners. And it was a sad symbol to have a number of slaves. A Roman wouldn't go anywhere without a half a dozen of the slaves accompanying him. The slaves were the limousine of the day. For a prominent person to be seen in public, he had to have a handful of slaves around him.

And because he recognized that some slaves had abilities, they would be able to work their craft, sell them, make money, and the owner of the slave would get a portion of that, obviously. He would get rent from the room that he left to the slaves.

But the slave would also be allowed to keep a portion of what he earned. And as being an industrious slave, being one with talents, as many of them did, not every slave would have been in that type of a category, but many were. In time, it would have been possible for a slave to amass enough money to buy his freedom or her freedom. In fact, that was quite often done in the Roman Empire, in that system of slavery that they had at that time. In fact, in the Bible, in Acts 22, we read an account where the Apostle Paul is being arrested, actually in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount, as a result of a riot that is stirred up because of his presence there.

And the garrison commander, the Roman garrison commander, comes out and arrests the Apostle Paul and starts to beat him a little bit. Paul says, wait, whoa, I'm a Roman citizen. You don't beat a Roman citizen. And the garrison commander says to Paul, you're a Roman citizen? Well, so am I. And the garrison commander says, I bought my freedom with a great sum of money. And Paul says, well, that's fine, but I was born a citizen, as well as being a Jew. And that ended the beating, and of course he had to have Paul received a lot better treatment than that at the time because he was a Roman citizen.

But it's an example of their, the story Luke tells us, of a man who had bought his freedom, which was quite often done as a result of their efforts and their industriousness. And they then would have had a, they would not have, they would have been a Roman citizen with a certain status. They would have certainly never risen to the top of the heap within the Roman world, but it would have been better, it was better than being at the bottom of the heap in that status of slavery that they had during the Empire.

And during that particular period of time. And so, understanding that is a very important piece of information to understand about the matter of slavery. And in fact, on our tour that we were taking last summer, we learned quite a bit about the concept of slavery and how it worked in the Roman world. And how the Apostle Paul and even Christ and other writers in the New Testament worked off of that. Because the ultimate lesson for all of us to understand is a spiritual lesson from that.

We are not slaves of anyone today in our country and we're American citizens and we have our freedoms and innate rights as citizens. But the reality is when we are converted, when we come under the blood of Jesus Christ, at baptism, and in faith, receive that sacrifice, have our sins forgiven, we become literal slaves to Jesus Christ in a spiritual sense.

And that is a very, very important matter for all of us to understand. It's not always something that we focus on and part of the reason is because of the terminology that is used within the Bible. Very often we see the word servant to be being used in Scripture. And that word servant is not the most accurate translation to really depict the lesson that is being given because probably beginning with the King James translators in 1611, they wanted to soften and dampen the impact of the word that didn't want to use the word slave.

Slavery was a big issue in the British Empire, ultimately colonial American, early American history, and various translations through the years just kept the word servant in there. Nothing wrong with the word servant. We are to have a servant's heart, servant's attitude, but the actual meaning of the word is a slave. And to be a slave means you are owned completely by someone else.

Spiritually speaking, we are owned by Jesus Christ. We are his slaves. He is our master, our Lord, and our teacher. And that is a critically important piece of understanding because then it unlocks a much, much deeper level of understanding in regard to the Scriptures, lessons and stories from the Bible, and ultimately our very purpose in life and our calling that God has given to us.

And when we understand that, then there are certain keys opened up to us that helps us to understand exactly why we are called today and why we sit in the Church of God, in the Body of Christ, why we obey God, keep his commands, do his teachings, preach the Gospel, seek to overcome, seek to live righteously.

All of that then takes on a whole other meaning. And it helps us to understand the answer to that question of why we are called now rather than later. With that little bit of a background, there is a particular parable that Jesus gave that can make a lot more sense to us. Actually, he gave two of them that talk about the same thing, but I want to turn to the one in Luke, Chapter 19. Where it is called the Parable of the Talents.

He gave another one in Matthew, Chapter 25, called the Parable of the Talents. But the same teaching is there. Let's turn to Luke, Chapter 19. And let's look at this as it is now. A little understood parable that Jesus gave in the final days before his death. In fact, he is entering Jerusalem for his final time. And in and through this parable, Jesus helps us to understand why we are called now. And why others who have been called through the ages are called, and why us now rather than many in the future.

In Luke, Chapter 19, beginning in verse 28, I'm sorry, verse 11. As they heard these things, he spoke another parable because he was near Jerusalem, and because they thought the Kingdom of God would appear immediately. He was coming into Jerusalem in the final week of his life, before he would be betrayed, arrested, beaten, and ultimately crucified. And he was at the peak of his ministry, and many of his closer disciples, and those who had been with him listening to his teachings, looked upon him as the fulfillment of the Scriptures about the Messiah from the Old Testament. They had looked year after year, decade generations had passed.

They were still looking for the Messiah. They were looking for the restoration of the line of David. And they thought, and this man, this teacher from Galilee, that they were seeing the one who would restore all of those promises spoken of by the prophets, and they thought the Kingdom of God would appear immediately. And so, because it was not going to appear at that time, Christ gives a parable.

And in this parable, he basically lays out a long gap of time that we are still in. And they didn't fully understand it at the time, but perhaps by the end of their life, they did. And he begins to lay it out, and he does so by using the terminology of a nobleman and his slaves. Look at verse 12. Therefore, he said, a certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return.

Christ is the nobleman of this parable. And he is going to go to a far kingdom, a far country, to receive a kingdom, and he will even later in this particular week, he will tell them, I go to prepare a place for you. And you will also be as well. And again, all of this teaching took a long time for it to kind of steep into his closest disciples, even his apostles.

But he was basically showing he was going to leave. And it says in verse 13 that he called ten of his servants, and he delivered to them ten minas, and he said to them, do business till I come. Now again, just insert the word slave. Because this is really what the parable is describing. He called ten of his slaves.

Now keep that in mind with what I briefly sketched regarding a bit of the background to the concept of Roman slavery. Otherwise, you would find yourself scratching your head and thinking and wondering what nobleman, what slave owner gives his slaves money and then goes away, leaving them unsupervised with all that money.

Remember, I just told you about the actual fact of what you can observe from the relics of the Roman world where within the institution of slavery, a wealthy landowner or businessman or even perhaps a nobleman or a senator of Rome, recognizing the talents and skills of some of his better slaves would actually set them up in business. Profit himself from it, but allow them to keep profit as well and then in time buy their freedom.

With that being a part of the times, an understanding that it was very common, and as I referenced the freedmen there in Jerusalem talking to Paul, who said, I bought my freedom with a great sum of money.

The only way that that could have been done was by their productive effort. A slave had no legacy, a slave had no inheritance. In most cases, he would not have certainly inherited from his master. Certain, probably better owners, slave owners, couldn't very well have left a legacy for their slaves, but most would not have received that. Understanding that it could be done gives a broader dimensional understanding to the whole concept of Roman slavery here.

Another thing to realize, again, what the translation in the words do to us here whenever you see a word servant, and you see it through the New Testament especially, where the servants are referenced, and again it's really talking in 95 plus percent of the cases about slaves, not a servant. When you and I use the word servant today, we have a totally different concept. We think of a person who will enter service and serve someone, and then they willingly enter in and then they can read.

I don't know how many of you have been following Downton Abbey over the last few years, okay? Any of you in this room? Go ahead, guys, raise your hand, even you. Okay, good. Rob has back there. We're real guys. We're going to emphasize. We're into the last two episodes of this final season of Downton Abbey, but when you get into the story, basically it's the story of this great house in England, the old man, the lord and lady of the manor, and the story of the servants downstairs. But the concept there, those who enter service, whether they're the butler, chambermaid, cook, or whatever, they willingly enter service.

They are the servants of the house. They can leave any time they want. A slave couldn't do that. So we use that terminology, again, in the scriptures. We're getting it from our perspective today, from a modern perspective, we're getting the wrong impression. These are slaves. They did not willingly go into it there, and they cannot willingly leave unless through time. Now, in terms of the analogy here, we willingly become a slave of God and of Jesus Christ. And should we choose, we couldn't leave that status. We don't want to, we don't plan to. We plan to endure to the end.

But understanding what our role is then helps us to appreciate that relationship even more, that we have to our Lord and our Master. What He did in paying the penalty for our sins that we can even enter into that relationship. But then what He expects of us, and this parable begins to sketch that information and lay that out for us. A certain nobleman went in to receive a kingdom and then was to return. Christ is to return. He promises to appear once again. And so the parable goes on and it says He called ten of His servants, delivered to them ten minus, or ten talents, ten parcels of money, monetary value.

And He said to them, Do business till I come. I said, That is a major, major concept. Do business till I come. We have a job to do. These slaves were being set up in business with a sum of money and told to do business till I come.

We are to do business. The business of the kingdom. The business of preaching the gospel, making disciples in all nations, teaching people to obey the teachings of Christ as we were taught and obey them ourselves.

We have a job to do. When we willingly enter into that relationship and we call Christ our Lord and our Master and God our Father, we have a relationship then that we willingly join ourselves to and don't want to back away from.

We have a job to accomplish. 1st 14th says that certain citizens hated Him. There was animosity stirred up and they sent the delegation after Him saying, We will not have this man to reign over us. Mankind has rejected much of the teaching of God and of Christ. The teachings of that kingdom that would make all the difference in the world today are those that are the least understood and applied in governments and economies today.

Mankind suffers as a result of that. To willingly have God to rule over us, to reign over us and to keep ourselves under that is a whole lifetime of commitment and it is what God has called us to do, to accomplish. In verse 15, so it was that when He returned, when the nobleman returned, having received the kingdom, He then commanded these servants to whom He had given the money to be called to Him, that He might know how much every man had gained by trading.

A time for accounting. The work that they had worked to do. They were set up like the remnants of what I saw there in Herculaneum in Italy. Slaves who had been set up in a shop by their nobleman to do business. There was always a time of accounting in that. And this is what is taking place. When He returned, having received His kingdom, He commanded these servants to come to whom He had given the money and He called them that He might know how much every man had gained by trading.

The first came and He said, Master, Your minut has earned ten minutas. Tenfold increase from the one that He had received. A tenfold. What a fantastic recovery that He had from that. Tenfold increase. And He said to him, Well done, good servant. Because you were faithful in a very little. Have authority over ten cities. Have authority over ten cities. Again, keep in mind that this parable, we have two accounts of it, and it is a profound parable given at the very end of His public ministry.

And it lays out the fact that there is a reward for the servants, for the slaves, for those who are called by this nobleman, for those whom God has called. There is a reward based on what is done. Now that reward is different from the gift of salvation. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. But there is an actual reward based on what is done by what we learn in these parables.

The second one came in verse 18 saying, Master, your mind has earned five minus, a five-fold increase on His part. And He said likewise, you will also be over five cities. We're talking about a reward that involves a reign and responsibility. In Revelation 20, you might just hold your place here, in Revelation 20, we are told that when Jesus does return...

Verse 5 of Revelation 20, the rest of the dead live not again till the thousand years were finished. Verse 4 talks about those who had not worshipped the beast or His image, nor had received His mark on their foreheads, or on their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not live until the thousand years were finished. What is described in verse 4 is the first resurrection, at the coming of Christ.

Blessed and holy is He who has part in the first resurrection. Over such, the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. This explicit part of that period, post-return of Christ, the millennium, what we call the millennium, this one thousand year period for its unique purpose and use within the plan of God, carries with it this designation of those who are part of that resurrection, reigning with Christ as priests of God for a thousand years.

A rulership, a cooperative arrangement, and a relationship with God and with Jesus Christ on this earth during that period of time that is explicit and certainly will continue on far beyond that. But when you couple that with what the parable of Luke 19 shows, there is a definite reward that Christ is going to parcel out at the time of His coming, and it will be based upon what is done with certain gifts and talents, responsibilities that are given.

He goes on back in Luke 19. He says, He was given the same that the other two were given. One increased it by ten, another by five. He took and put it into a napkin, and He did nothing with it. He said, And He said to him, The nobleman did, I will judge you, ye wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, collecting what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow.

He would take from, again, understanding how a Roman nobleman would have taken from some of the prophets that were generated by what he had given to a slave. It makes a little bit more sense. This statement here of what he's saying here of what I did not deposit or reaping what I did not sow. The efforts of the other individuals, the Roman would take it apart in.

Why then, he says in verse 23, Did you not put my money in the bank? That at my coming I might have collected it with interest. He didn't even do that. And so he said to those who stood by, Take the mina from him, and give it to him who has ten minas. But he said, Master, he has ten minas. But I say to you that to everyone who has will be given.

And from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. But bring here those enemies of mine who do not want me to reign over them and slay them before me. It is a parable that is hard from one perspective, gracious and generous from another perspective. Almost as if you see a complete picture of God and Christ in here, the gracious, loving, merciful, sharing aspect of God, and yet the exacting aspect of judgment that is involved in that relationship as well at this particular time.

Two individuals worked a return, and one did not. Those two received additional responsibility and additional opportunity. Do you ever stop and wonder why you are called now? Why it is that by the grace of God, you, your father, your mother, your aunt, your uncle, some other family member, received a calling that ultimately was passed on to you, and you received that calling as well, and you elected to obey, and you have been a part of the Church of God for any number of decades, 40, 50, 60 or more decades.

And why now? Why not later? Over the years, as I've worked with many people, a few times over the years, I've had times, the Council of Individuals who kind of thought it all out, and really recognized that to be called now, there's a pitiful of work, rather than later, after the coming of Christ, and after Satan has been removed, and that influence is no longer being broadcast and influencing the world, and that it might be better, it might be easier then for salvation.

I've actually had a few conversations like that over the years with individuals who understood the plan of God as the Bible reveals it, and in a sense, were making a calculated decision. I can't be their judge. Not in every case did they eventually become a part of the Church. God's their final judge. I don't know if they were receiving a calling and rejected that calling in their heart.

God will have to be the one to judge and to evaluate that. But it is a thought that can be on the table for a person to consider. You made the decision you made, and I've made the decision that I made many, many years ago, and put our shoulder to the plow, and began a life as a slave to our Lord and our Master, and let our lives be bought and paid for by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And we received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and that Spirit has come into us, and we have yielded to it, and spent a lifetime overcoming. Overcoming the sins that we generate, the sins that are around us in this world, and the culture, and the society in which we live. Overcoming even Satan, and making progress in that direction.

And you know that progress and that overcoming comes by degrees and comes by stages. Just recently, in the doctrines class that I teach at the Ambassador Bible College, I went through the doctrine of baptism, and usually when I get to that point, that doctrine in the course of the year, I've got a foundation of a lot of other classes and several other fundamental doctrines of the Bible, and baptism gets real personal. Part of what I cover in baptism is certainly repentance, and the scriptural teaching about baptism, talk about even the fact that sometimes a person might doubt whether their first baptism was valid.

And at times, as I'm teaching, you can see people's wheels starting to work out there in class. And over the last two or three years, inevitably, somebody wants to talk after that class. And they've had doubts about their baptism through the years. And generally, my experience has been those doubts can be assuaged, they can be counseled through, you can work through them, and come to understanding. Sometimes, where we may doubt whether or not it ever took, what we're really not fully understanding is that repentance comes by stages at times.

This is one of the things that I've learned. There's a repentance that we all have when we accept the blood of Christ, when we go into the waters of baptism, and we make that commitment. We've made, in some cases, a bigger turnaround in life than maybe someone else. We have some pretty dark black sins up there that we know that we have to repent of and be forgiven for. Others, especially a young person that's been raised in the church all their life, it's not quite as dark.

But we all have to repent to meet the Scripture teaching. But that's only the beginning of repentance. And repentance is a lifelong matter. We have to continue to repent. And there are times, as years go by, we will reach a deeper level of understanding about repentance than we ever had when we were baptized 15, 20, 30 years earlier, because of our understanding. We've grown in grace and knowledge. God's Spirit has opened up more of the Scriptures. He's opened up more about ourselves. And we understand repentance. And sometimes people say, Oh, if I'd only known that. I didn't know repentance that deeply when I was baptized.

And it's true. But that doesn't mean that the baptism was invalid. It just means you've grown in deeper understanding. And a lot of times that's how I've been able to work people through to a point where you lift that burden off their shoulders and they recognize, Oh, okay. I'm okay. Just have to keep repenting. Just have to keep moving moving forward. That's the life we have been called to. And as we do that, as we move in a sense to a deeper understanding of repentance, that moves from maybe some of the gross things that we might have done at some point in our past life, very obvious sins, we move perhaps deeper into the understanding about our own nature that we still have to repent of before God in order to take on the mind of Christ.

And we remove ourselves further from that to where God's Spirit is working more through us and we have a deeper love for His Word for God. We have a deeper love for one another. As we endure certain tests and trials, we grow in that as well. That is the calling. That is the conversion. And that is, in a sense, multiplying the talent or the gifts or what we have been given represented by these talents or minas that God gives to us.

And we develop a deeper character, a godly, righteous, spiritual character that we didn't have at the beginning. So that when the time of accounting comes for us, then we will hear those words, well done, that good and faithful servant.

But we have to take what has been given to us. And what has been given to us at the outset is the free gift of grace and the offer of salvation, which we don't merit that at all. The offer of salvation that God gives to us never has a price tag other than the sacrifice of Christ. We can't earn that. That is given to us freely. This is what Ephesians chapter 2 says. Paul brings that out very clearly. Ephesians 2, verse 8.

For by grace you have been saved, through faith in that not of yourselves it is the gift of God. Salvation is by the grace of God. We must believe that it is. We must believe in the sacrifice of Christ and accept that. But God gives it without...you can't buy it. Nothing that we can do will earn that. It is the gift of God. And it's not of works, verse 9, lest anyone should boast. The gift of eternal life is by the grace of God. He goes on, verse 10, to say that we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We are to continue to walk in good works in our life, a lifetime of growing in grace and knowledge and overcoming sin, growing in a deeper understanding of even repentance and salvation and faith. And in a sense, move into that realm of what this parable is really talking about. We cannot afford to find ourselves in the category of the third-served slave who did not take any initiative. That slave lacked a sincere desire to serve and to please his master. He knew his master's instructions. Take the money I'm investing in you. Do something with it. Turn a profit. Do business till I come. Be a profitable servant. Two of them succeeded in that. One tenfold, the other fivefold. The third failed.

And Christ knows what He does to them. Why did He fail? He lacked confidence in Himself. He also denied His master's confidence in Him. Because His master, the nobleman, and ultimately Christ, had confidence in Him. He has confidence in you. All of us. He has called us. God did not choose us to fail. He chose us to succeed. And to appreciate that confidence that He has in us. And He has chosen us now in advance of the billions who will be a part of that period that we call the Great White Room Judgment. And that time beyond the thousand year period. Of the dead, small, and great who will rise. In a different world, yes. And in a different time. And will be free from the poles of Satan and the culture and civilizations that He and His world have created. They would have already gone through it, suffered, and died under that. They will have to do that again. They will have to have faith. They will have to receive the same spirit and the same forgiveness and the same gift of grace as well. And yes, it will be a different time. But it is a different phase of the plan of God. We are in a different one now, and it is unique. And it is a time that will end at the return of Christ, the time of that first resurrection. And a unique period of service, rulership, reigning with Christ for a thousand years. And all that will be involved in the molding and shaping of a society to prepare for all the others to learn and to come to know and understand the way of God. And God has called us now. And that's what this parable is showing us. And given us that opportunity to use this gift of the confidence and the investment that He has made in us where we have been purchased as His slaves. And accepted the price that He paid for us, the highest price imaginable, the blood of the Creator of the universe, who says that He will never forsake us, and that He has given us His Spirit as a down payment on eternal life. And He will be with us. He will stand by our side. We have to have confidence in that. And believe, as it says in Philippians chapter 4.

Verse 13, I can do all things, Paul writes, through Christ who strengthens me. That takes confidence that we can do that, regardless of the trials, the challenges, the difficulties of life. And again, on a day of remembrance and memorial, for a faithful servant whom we've all known and journeyed toward the Kingdom with, this is a point for us all to soften and to consider and to understand the confidence that we must have. That with God all things are possible. We can overcome. We can endure. We can deal with any tragedy, any setback. We can deal with any challenge. We can deal with ourselves. We can deal with what the world throws at us. We can even deal with what Satan might throw at us through others. And remain faithful in the plan and the purpose that God has called us to do. He has given us His Spirit, there's a down payment on eternal life that He's with us and He stands with us.

And we can, in a sense, generate a profit for Him on His investment in us if we understand exactly what it is that we have been called to and why we are called now. In this age, in this time, to prepare through a life of overcoming, to ultimately live and reign with Christ in His kingdom. That parable has always offered for us in this age in the Church a capsule of understanding to answer that question of why we are called now rather than later. And with a deeper understanding of not only some of the background, but ultimately what it expresses about the confidence that God has within each of us. It can hopefully give us the courage, the confidence to endure to the end as well. So that it can and will be said of us, well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into that kingdom. That's why we've been called now and that is a reflection of the confidence that God has in us. Let's think about that and let's remember that as we think of the brevity of our life and the sure words of God's eternal life given to us.

Thank you.