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Dec 11, 2022

While We Are Waiting

While We Are Waiting

Passage: Matthew 25:14-30

Speaker: Andrew Kerhoulas

Series: 2022 Advent: Waiting is the Hardest Part

Keywords: master, talents, servants, investing, entering the joy of our master, weeping and gnashing of teeth

Our late modern moment is obsessed with discovering who we are and what we are. But the season of advent beckons us to ponder when we are. Advent reminds us that we are living in the meantime between the once and future arrival of Jesus. What then should we do in the time between his advents? Jesus’ parable about three slaves reveals exactly what he expects of his disciples while our Master is away.

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: —based on Psalm 25:1-10
LEADER: In this Advent season of waiting on the Lord,

ALL: We trust in the Lord’s goodness. We rely on his mercy. We find shelter in his steadfast love.

LEADER: In this Advent season of waiting,

ALL: We walk in the Lord’s way. We follow his example of love. We keep our covenant promises.

LEADER: In this Advent season of waiting,

ALL: Lord, forget our sins. Remember your love. Remember each one of us. Remember your people everywhere.

LEADER: In this Advent season of waiting,

ALL: Lord, we wait for your salvation. We wait for your leading. We wait for your coming.

LEADER: In this Advent season of waiting,
ALL: we worship you.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:) John 3:16-18
LEADER: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

CENTRAL TEXT: Matthew 25:14-30
“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.[e] You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

BENEDICTION: Based on John 15:13-15
LEADER: Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.

ALL: May his love empower us to invest his gifts with joy and to bear his fruit in all we do.

LEADER: Let us go forth to serve the world as those who love our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

ALL: Thanks be to God.

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Proverbs 30:8-9
  • Daniel 9:26-27; 11:27; 12:13
  • Zephaniah 1:10-14, 18
  • Matthew 19:23-24 
  • Luke 19:11-28
  • John 12: 1-3
  • 1 Corinthians 1:8; 7:29-31
  • Philippians 2:1-11
  • 1 Thessalonians 5:2
  • 1 Peter 4:7
  • 2 Peter 3:12
  • Revelation 6:15-17

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. What is “the most wonderful time of year” usually like for you? Did you observe the season of Advent growing up? Is anything different this year? 
  2. Is Advent’s historical emphasis on the return of Jesus new to you? Explain. 
  3. If you’ve heard it before, how has the parable of the talents been explained to you? Was there anything new this time around?
  4. What motivated the unfaithful slave’s decision to bury his talent in the ground? How can misperceptions of God or ourselves steer us away from investing in his kingdom?
  5. How does the gospel empower us to become good and faithful servants as we await our Master’s return? Spend time adoring Jesus, our Master and Friend, before you ask him how you can faithfully invest his gifts where and with whom he has placed you. 

ILLUSTRATIONS:

QUOTES: 

  • We cannot say for the mass of mankind that the day of the Son of Man has come. We await this still. But waiting demands great strength. Eberhard Arnold
  • ‘Deal with money as though not dealing with it.’ Make money, spend money, invest money, put money in the bank, take money out of the bank, buy mutual funds, give some of it to the church and get a tax deduction—but do it all with the sure and certain knowledge that silver and gold will not help us in the last day, that there will be no traders in the house of the Lord on the last day, that the merchants of the earth will wail when no one buys their wares on the last day.” Fleming Rutledge
  • In a very real sense, the Christian community lives in advent all the time. It can well be called the TIME BETWEEN, because the people of God live in the Time Between the first coming of Christ, incognito in the stable in Bethlehem, and his second coming, in glory, to judge the living and the dead…the disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in the present world is held in dynamic tension with the future glory that is yet to come. In that advent tension, the church lives its life. Fleming Rutledge 
  • Our idolatries are less like conscious decisions to believe a falsehood and more like learned dispositions to hope in what will disappoint. James K.A. Smith
  • Concentration on reformation without revival leads to skins without wine; concentration on revival without reformation soon loses the wine for want of skins. Richard Lovelace
  • Let us leave this parable with a solemn determination by God’s grace, never to be content with the profession of Christianity without practice. Let us not only talk about religion, but act. Let us not only feel the importance of saving faith in Christ but do something too. J.C. Ryle 
  • To do no harm is the praise of a stone not of a man. Richard Baxter
  • Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field, for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
  • God refuses to be God without us.
    We asked God to say something definite and God,
    getting personal, sent Jesus Christ. We were surprised. God was other than we
    imagined. We can't make God into whatever we please. Jesus demonstrated that
    God is better than omnipotent, omniscient or any other high-sounding
    abstraction. God is love embodied: nonviolent, relentlessly seeking, convening,
    suffering love. Human happiness is life lived in response to the God we've got. It's good news: Because God really was in Jesus Christ, reconciling the world to God, we can be with God. Will Willimon
  • And well may God with the serving-folk
    Cast in His dreadful lot;
    Is not He too a servant,
    And is not He forgot?

    For was not God my gardener
    And silent like a slave;
    That opened oaks on the uplands
    Or thicket in graveyard gave?
    G.K Chesterton
  • If silver and gold are evil things in themselves, then those who keep away from them deserve to be praised. But if they are good creations of God, which we can use both for the needs of our neighbor and for the glory of God, is not a person, silly, yes, even unthankful to God, if he refrains from them as though they were evil? Martin Luther
  • Wealth, be it little or much, is not condemned in Scripture. What is criticized is the failure to see that all material possessions belong to God. We are merely stewards of his treasures. Kenneth Bailey 
  • The question then becomes, how do we handle our money in such a way as to indicate that money has no lasting significance? The answer to this question is surprisingly simple. We bear witness to our allegiance to the kingdom of God by giving away a lot of our money. When we do this, we are acting out our calling as the people of the age to come. Fleming Rutledge

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