This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come (Matthew 24:14).

One of the motivations that drive the work of Bible translators and missionaries arises from this verse. It is the conviction that before Jesus comes again the Gospel must be preached throughout the whole inhabited world. It was not achieved in the first century. And while great progress has been made, the preeminent organization for Bible translation, Wyliffe, would attest that this goal has still not been reached. There are still inhabited places in the world that have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Now, while this is certainly a noble work, which every church and every believer should be actively doing, we must also understand that the preaching of the Gospel does not guarantee the reception of the Gospel. In fact, even when the Gospel ultimately reaches the whole world and Jesus comes, Jesus prophesied that there will be a woeful absence of faith:

However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8).

For the most part the Gospel will be rejected. 

Yet, this should not take away from our earnestness in preaching it or even in our hope that we can be used by God to save some. Only God knows who will ultimately be saved, and He has not shared this with us. Perhaps He has not told us because He does not want us to have a fatalistic attitude toward evangelism and missions. Since we do not know who will be saved or how many, and yet we have this command, we can earnestly preach the Gospel and try to save as many people as we can. 

Friends, I am thrilled that local, national and world evangelization is the heartbeat of my local church. I was thrilled to share a sister's excitement over their successfully raising many thousands of dollars to support the missionary efforts of their church. At another church I visited, I think some sixty percent of their giving goes to support missionary efforts. I think this is great! 

The commission to make disciples of all nations (cf. Matthew 28:18-20) is still relevant today. It will be relevant until the end of the end. Even though Jesus predicted a woeful absence of faith in the end, let us, for our part, be found faithful.

Many of us work secular jobs. Let us convert these secular jobs into ministry opportunities to share the Gospel. Some of us participate in Christian-based ministries. Let us use these platforms to educate and inspire believers to know God's Word, so that they may become effective witnesses for Jesus to the world around them. A few of us are technologically astute. Let us use this ability to further spread the Gospel and inspire the saints. And those of us with families should certainly be training and modeling the priority of God's Word to our children, so that they can carry on the good work that God calls every believer to do until He comes. 

The King will answer and say to them, "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me" (Matthew 25:40).

Is Jesus here identifying with all of humanity when He says "one of these brothers of Mine" and again later "one of the least of these" (Matthew 25:45)? I have generally received a middle-of-the-road answer, like "It refers to everyone but especially to Christians." The biblical basis for this interpretation may be found in Paul's exhortation to the Galatians:

Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers (Galatians 6:10).

The problem here is that while there is a moral basis for doing good to all people, Jesus never expresses a common brotherhood with the rest of humanity. In fact, He even seems at one point to be rejecting his biological brothers, limiting the scope to those that follow Him in doing God's will.

A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother (Mark 3:32-35).

What is even more compelling is something we find within the context of Matthew's own gospel:

“Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward" (Matthew 10:40-42).

Here Jesus directly and completely identifies Himself with the very disciples that He is sending out into the mission (cf. John 13:20; 15:20) a scenario very similar to what is described in Matthew 25. Jesus says that when people welcome and serve the disciples, they are, in effect, welcoming and serving him. What is even more telling is that Jesus also calls his disciples "these little ones," which is the very same expression he uses in Matthew 25. 

Even more compelling is that both Matthew 10 and Matthew 25 are situated in the larger context of Jesus sending his disciples out into a hostile environment, where they will suffer persecution. With such a prospect in view, the message of Matthew 25 would be not so much morally instructive as it is prophetic. providing encouragement to the very disciples, who would experience these persecutions. They would be going out as Jesus' representatives, and the way people treated them would be rewarded and punished just as if they were treating Jesus that way.

Theologically, the traditional way of reading Matthew 25 is also problematic. If "brothers" is a reference to all of humanity, and the passage is taken as Jesus' command for believers and unbelievers alike to take care of the poor and needy in the world, then this passage would seem to teach a salvation by works. For Matthew 25:46 declares that those who fail to minister to the needs of the poor or needy "will go away into eternal punishment" while those who do will enter "eternal life". And if Christians are also in view, does this mean that Christians can lose their salvation?

However, if "brothers" is understood to be those disciples that Jesus sends out, then the reception and rejection of them by the nations would be understood as the reception or rejection of their message. Whoever accepted the disciples and their message would be saved. Whoever rejected them would be condemned. 

Finally, it must be noted that Jesus gives no exhortation or command here in Matthew 25:31-36. He does not conclude the section with a direct command, warning his disciples to be sure to take care of the poor and needy, as he often does elsewhere. This lends support to the argument that this passage was not meant to be morally instructive but prophetically instructive. It was not meant so much for exhortation but for encouragement in view of coming persecution. 

Friends, this does not mean that we neglect charity toward all, but this might give us encouragement in knowing how closely Jesus identifies with those who go out in His Name. Paul also used this kind of language in identifying with fellow believers in Corinth:

You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts (2 Corinthians 3:2-3).

Likewise, Christ lives within us, and we are his ambassadors, representing him everywhere we go. And what a powerful notion it is to imagine that the way the world receives us is counted as the way they receive Christ Jesus our Lord. For us, we are buoyed in spirit by the weight of this great privilege, but for others, they will be held accountable by the weight of this responsibility. As Jesus declared:

Very truly I tell you, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me (John 13:20).

Friends, let us boldly represent our Lord to this increasingly hostile world, knowing that we carry in our bodies both the substitutionary death and the resurrection life of Christ

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body (2 Corinthians 4:7-11).

Rather than focus on a specific verse, i noted that a single story reveals itself from the concatenation of the two chapters.

(Christ will leave) Signs of the ends of age - destruction of the temple (Matt 24:1-32) 

 

(Be faithful - we dont know when Christ will return) Day an hour unknown (Matt 24:36-51)

 

(We must be prepared for His Return) Parable of the ten virgins (Matt 25:1-13)

 

(God wants us to be good stewards) Parable of the ten talents (Matt 25:14-30)

 

(Christ will return and will ask if cared for the least of this world) Sheep and the Goats (Matt 25:31-46)

Friends, someone asked the following question:

I thought Sabbath was a part of the old law? What does it mean when it says "pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath" Matthew 24:20?

I responded...

God's grace is more than sufficient for us everyday. I've read the parables that were given by the Lord today and learned one very important lesson. The Lord started His teaching with the destruction of Jerusalem and her temple and what will happen at the end of the age. Then he said no one knows when all these calamities fall upon the earth and warned that we must stay alert! I thought about how we stay alert on Christ's second coming and the last parable gave me the answer - the Sheep and the Goats. Brothers and sisters! I strongly believe that what we did for Martin and Yarjan is what Jesus told us to do in the parable. They are the least of brothers of the King. They are strangers to us. Yarjan is sick. The Lord moved our hearts to look after them! Lately I've been looking for a place to open my own dental practice and that was literally the only thing on my mind. I've been on emotional roller coaster for a while because I got frustrated by too many dental offices out there and my timidity. But today the Lord asked me how come I don't get sad or frustrated with lack of zeal to take care of His business which should be my primary concern! I was soooo engrossed in the affairs of this world without realizing that my feet got caught in my enemy's snare. I praise the Lord for His mercy and love for us!

Friends, consider Jesus' parable of the talents, where a certain man invested money in three servants, two of whom gained profits and one did not. When the master returned, he rewarded the two profitable servants and condemned the unprofitable one.

I am highlighting this parable because it has often been misunderstood. All of the major versions (NIV, NASB, KJV) do not translate the Greek word for talent (which is just a transliteration of ταλέντο). While this should not be a problem since the context makes abundantly clear what is meant, many who only casually read this parable mistaken the Greek "talent" for the English idea of talent, which carries the idea of skill or ability. As such, those who make this lexical mistake, then make an interpretative mistake.

For example, I've heard it preached from this text that God doles out certain gifts and abilities to believers. The two profitable servants represent those believers that exercise their gifts to bear spiritual fruit. The one that buried his talent, is the one that did not exercise his God-given gift and ability and was, therefore, judged for it.

As reasonable as this interpretation may sound at first glance, there are two glaring problems with it. First, as I mentioned, it wrongly interprets "talents" as abilities rather than money. If talent and ability were the same thing, then Matthew 25:15 would make no sense:

And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability.

Notice, that the verse itself mentions "ability," and it is not what was given to them but what the servants already possessed. What was given to them were the talents, namely, money, which they were expected to use in keeping with their ability to handle the amount, whether five, two or one. Thus, a correct principle from this might be that God does not give or assign more than what a person is able to handle. And there are many examples throughout the Bible where this is true.

But another problem with the interpretation given above is that the address is not to believers only. We must conclude this because the punishment for the lazy servant, who buried his talent, is the punishment reserved for the wicked and unbelieving, namely casting into "the outer darkness," where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 25:30). Since the judgment on the servant is condemnation, his action must be equivalent to unbelief. James' statement, "faith without works is dead" (James 2:22) may apply here, such that every true believer will bring forth some fruit.

Now, although "talents" in this parable does not represent abilities, the question still remains, "What do the talents represent?" We cannot be too dogmatic about what it means because Jesus does not tell us. However, we are given an interpretative clue in Matthew 25:29, where Jesus says, "For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away." Now, this expression is also found in the parallel parable in Luke 19:12-28.

The principle is also found in Luke 8:18 and Mark 4:25. These latter texts follow Jesus' Parable of the Soils, where a Sower sows seed in four different kinds of soils. Now Jesus does explain this parable to the disciples, where the key points are that the seed represents the Word of God and the soils represent the hearts of the hearers. The expression "him who does not have..." in the context of the Parable of the Soils seems to be connected to the reception of the Word of God. For in Luke 8:18 Jesus says right before this expression, "Therefore, be careful how you listen" and in Mark 4:24, "Consider carefully what you hear..." Thus, in these contexts "those who have" refer to those that receive the Word of God with a noble and good heart, whereas "those that do not have" refer to those who reject the Word of God. And those that reject it, even the initial benefit they had of hearing it is taken away. Perhaps what this has in mind is that even the little benefit that they may have received in this life will be removed at the time of God's judgment.

Coming back to our present text, the Parable of the Talents, could it be that these talents are like the seed in the Parable of the Soils and represent the Word of God, and the different servants are like the different soils,  representing the hearts of the people. Therefore, the one that buries the Word of God is, therefore, condemned, because he has not allowed God's Word to do its saving work. However, the two servants that use the Word of God to make it grow, like the soils that produce thirty, sixty and a hundred-fold, these servants are rewarded as "good and faithful servants."

Again, as this is a parable that is not completely explained by Jesus, I can only offer my perspective as a possible understanding of this text. However, the principle of God judging people by their reception of His Word is a true and clear principle. Therefore, shouldn't we be like those with a "noble and good heart," and carefully hear, meditate, and apply His Word to our lives? In this way, we can be fruitful; and if my interpretation is correct, we will then be welcomed into heaven as "good and faithful" servants. Dear friends, this is our calling until Jesus comes:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:8-10).