Who Is the Faithful and Wise Servant? (Matt. 24:45–25:46)

Listen or read the following transcript from The Gospel Coalition as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of New Testament studies from Matthew 24-25.

I would like to begin by reading Matthew 24:45–25:46.

“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions.

But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps.

The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’

‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. Later the others also came. ‘Sir! Sir!’ they said. ‘Open the door for us!’ But he replied, ‘I tell you the truth, I don’t know you.’ Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

So reads the Word of God. Let us bow in prayer.

Lord God, you are the majestic One before whom even the angels hide their faces. The courts of heaven resound again and again and again with “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come,” and we would ask that our weak voices may join the heavenly throngs in praise and adoration.

We take great comfort to know, heavenly Father, that your dear Son, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the slaughtered Lamb, has come from the middle of the throne from your very presence to take the scroll from your right hand and bring about all your decrees of salvation and judgment for the world. He has prevailed to open the scroll. We thank you, therefore, that a new song is sung even now to the Lamb and to him who sits on the throne, a new song that even the angels of heaven cannot really sing.

We bless you, therefore, that you are not only the God of creation but the God of redemption. We are twice yours because you made us and because, in the person of your dear Son, you have redeemed us. Now with the church through the ages we, too, cry, “Even so, come Lord Jesus.” You live in unapproachable holiness, but we, Lord God, are still entangled in all kinds of corruption and decay, and we hunger for the time when the new heaven and the new earth will appear, the home of righteousness. We, too, begin to cry, “O Lord, how long?”

We hunger for the day when there will be no more wickedness, no more corruption in our own minds and hearts, when our prayers will always be fervent, when never again will we entertain lingering doubt or carnality or lust. We hunger for the time when there will not only be justice and equity but when all will acknowledge there is justice and equity.

We hunger for the time when every knee shall bow and confess, “Jesus is Lord,” to the praise of your name. We hunger for the vindication of your Son and the health of your people. We hunger, Lord God, for the abolition of death, the death of death, the last enemy finally and utterly destroyed.

O Lord God, sometimes we do grow impatient. We ask, Lord God, that with this cry for your dear Son’s return we may also know pulsating through us something of your own longsuffering, your patience toward human beings who do not believe. Grant to us the same forbearance, the same longsuffering, the same compassion. Teach us, O Lord God, how to wait for your dear Son with anticipation and perseverance, with expectation and industry. Teach us, Lord God, how to wait. In Jesus’ name, amen.

How many different kinds of waiting there are. There is the waiting of the impatient husband sitting in the car on a Sunday morning gently tooting the horn every now and then to tell his wife to hurry up because at least he’s in the car. He may not think it would serve the cause well if he went and helped to get the children ready too.

There is the waiting for the sun to go down on a calm night when you want to catch every incandescent hue and you do not want the scene to disappear too quickly. It could last forever and it would end too soon.

There is the waiting to grow up. Some begrudging every fleeting moment (“I want to remain young”). Others impatient to grow up (13-year-old girls going on 25). Then there is the waiting for the children to grow up. How many more diapers? How many more spats with my 14-year-old and so forth?

There is waiting for God to answer prayer. Sometimes a waiting in quiet confidence, bold assurance, and sometimes a waiting over years and years and years for a request that a loved one become regenerate, until finally, perhaps after 20 or 30 years, that prayer, too, is answered.

There is waiting around the book table knowing that imminently (two or three minutes) someone will come out and say, “Chow’s on,” and we will eat. On the other hand, there is waiting for the meal announcement when you don’t want it to come. You are just trying to finish one more page, one more chapter, one more paper, and you begrudge its onset.

How many different kinds of waiting are there? There is, of course, the waiting of Moses to see God at work to let the people go, and there is the waiting of a Job for an answer. How, then, should we wait for the coming of the Lord? Upon a little reflection, the answer is not an obvious one. In fact, the question is extremely important because it is tied ultimately to your entire structure of eschatology. It is not just a question of these four parables we shall examine in sequence in due course. It is tied ultimately to broader eschatological considerations.

Last night we saw how Jesus insists simultaneously that the kingdom is inaugurated and that it is future, and if the balance is distorted in that tension we will quickly introduce major wobbles, not only in our theology but also in our ethics, in our attitudes, in our hopes, in our conduct, in our speech.

Two almost paradigmatic churches in this respect in the New Testament are the churches at Thessalonica and Corinth, respectively. Let us consider first the church at Corinth. It would take too long to outline all of the problems in Corinth, but I submit to you the heart of the dilemma in Corinth, the one root cause that had some influence on all of the other sins in Corinth, was an over-realized eschatology. You see this unambiguously in 1 Corinthians, chapter 4. Paul says, rather sardonically (chapter 4, verse 8), “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have become kings—and that without us!”

Can you not hear them preaching to one another? “You’re a child of the king! Live like one! Does God, your heavenly Father, want you to live like a pauper when you are a king? Has he not already so richly poured out the Spirit upon you that already you so taste of the age to come that you ought to speak with the tongues of men and of angels? You must count your blessings in the heavenlies. Already you have the authority of the sons of God.”

Paul says, “How I wish that you really had become kings so that we might be kings with you! For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men.

We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored; we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated; we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless. When we are persecuted, we endure it. When we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.”

You see, these Christians thought because they were Christians, therefore, they ought to be honored. They thought because they were Christians, therefore, they should be counted wise. They had a kind of wisdom the world did not have. Because they were children of the king, therefore, they ought to act like royalty because they already had the enduement from the Spirit; therefore, they were so taken up with the age of the life to come that already they should enjoy all of its benefits.

The only thing they didn’t claim for themselves was the resurrection and that was because some of them had trouble believing in the resurrection in any case so they figured they had all the rest of the blessings and that’s all there was. The pomp and the arrogance grew and grew and grew, until eventually it began to affect church polity and a number of other things as well. Some of the triumphalism of the surrounding society began to infect them.

In the ancient world, for instance, there was no university system such as we have today, but many people of higher levels of education began to lecture in the marketplace and charge a small fee. If the person was any good, then pretty soon he would gather a few students around him and up the fees. When he upped the fees, people thought, “This chap must be good. His fees are high.” I mean, Harvard must be good, mustn’t it, because its fees are high.

You gathered a few more students because your fees were high and because you had a few more students you put up your fees until, ultimately, the person with the highest fees and the most students obviously got the most honor. That was the learned highest branch of authority. Then along comes Paul and he refuses to take one red cent, and the Corinthians don’t know what to do with him. How could he be anything at all?

Socrates was charged with the same thing. One of his judges said to him, “Good you may be, but wise you cannot be for you do not value your own society, and if you do not value your own society, why should anybody else?” That, of course, is exactly the charge that is leveled against Paul in 2 Corinthians, chapter 11, for instance. He explicitly answers this terrible charge when he asks in verse 7, “Was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge?”

Moreover, it was important in that society for the academicians to speak with a kind of learned rhetoric. We have lost that, of course, today because of television and radio. Few people orate any more (they just talk at you), but up to the turn of the century in this country rhetoric was an established part of any university curriculum.

In lectures to my students, you may recall, Spurgeon mocks those in his day who appeal to a certain artificial kind of rhetoric. “They have to speak with the proper intonations and woe betide the preacher who misplaced a participle or who split an infinitive. It is not done. It is important that the hand be handled correctly and blessings will come down.” Spurgeon, of course, takes the Mickey out of them in a wonderful way, for he understands oratory does not depend on artificial rules.

In that sense, Paul likewise does not come up to par. Doubtless he was a powerful preacher if you gauged such things by the number of converts and by the gift of his own natural flow empowered by the Spirit, but if you judged him by standards of ancient Greek rhetoric, well, that’s quite another matter. There he is forced to confess (chapter 10, verse 10 of 2 Corinthians), “For some say, ‘His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.’ ”

Again, chapter 11, verse 6: “I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge.” That is, he was concerned that content was more important than manner. As a result, he was dismissed. He was pooh-poohed. He was put down while the Corinthians were gloating they had the inside track, they were wise, they were elevated, they were kings.

As a result, this church was racked with division, with arrogance. There is no trace here of any expectancy of the Lord’s return. No hungering and thirsting for the home of righteousness. There is not a trace of desire to be removed from this world. There was too much participation in the world. The blessings that did come the Corinthians’ way were bound up so much with the culture of the day. Prosperity in Corinth was a sign of the Lord’s approval.

On the other hand, there is the church in Thessalonica. Here the problem is rather different. Paul has just finished his ministry at Philippi. He moves on to Thessalonica. In Philippi he has suffered a great deal, of course, and in Thessalonica he’s only there about four weeks before he’s really run out of that town as well.

Pretty soon he writes back, terribly concerned for the state of this small congregation he has left behind. Immediately you detect some interesting overtones. First Thessalonians 1:6: “You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.” In other words, here is a church which immediately, unlike the Corinthian church, faced suffering.

Then we discover in chapter 2, verses 1 to 4, that Paul, no longer able to endure the suspense over his ignorance over their state, thinks its wise to be left alone in Athens, and he, therefore, sends Timothy (verse 2) to find out how they’re getting on. “You know quite well,” he says, “that we were destined for these trials.” Verse 4: “In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you we would be persecuted, and it turned out that way as you well know.” This was a church, therefore, by now versed already in opposition, persecution, difficulty.

By the time you get to chapter 4, verse 13, you come across an explicitly eschatological section, and here it is immediately obvious the Thessalonians are so anticipating the return of the Lord that they can scarcely imagine any of their own number could die before that return takes place, and they are in a theological wasteland not knowing how to interpret what happens to these brothers and sisters in Christ who have died before the Lord has returned. They have a notion of imminent return, and Paul has to sort out their theology.

By the time you find 2 Thessalonians written, in my judgment within about three months of the first epistle, the situation has become more serious yet. Now the Thessalonians have donned their ascension robes. (At least some of them have.) They have resigned from their employment. They’re sponging off the rest of the congregation, and they are so convinced the Lord’s coming is soon that they have abandoned the world entirely and are simply looking heavenward waiting for the Lord’s glorious return.

Therefore, Paul has to say some sharp things. In the first place, he has to cool their understanding of the imminent return of Christ, and he ultimately takes up a stance like that I tried to outline last night. Second Thessalonians, chapter 2: “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until certain things take place.”

By the time he comes to chapter 3, we discover the matter is very serious even in personal conduct. Chapter 3, verse 7: “You yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you.

We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’ We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat. And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right.”

Here it appears, therefore, you have some busybodies who have become idle in their enthusiastic anticipation of the Lord’s return, but, in fact, they are not pulling their weight in the congregation. They are simply sponging off the brothers. Here, in these two epistles, you do not find a single trace of triumphalism.

There is no hint the Thessalonians are going through some kind of profound glorying, self-congratulations, in the area of the gifts of the Spirit or the fruit of the Spirit, nor is there any sense they feel they are kings already. They are waiting for the Lord’s return. As a result, they have rather copped out of society, and in fact, they are becoming irresponsible in their conduct.

I suggest to you the church, throughout its long history, has often swung from one extreme to the other, not getting the balance very well. On the one hand, there are some in most generations who so stress the coming of the Lord that somehow your responsibility in this life is short-circuited. It’s not supposed to work that way.

In the best of these preachers, the imminent coming of the Lord becomes an incentive to urgent evangelism, but even that urgent evangelism can be corrupted, because if it is that urgent you may not be trying to build the church so much as count scalps. Every one who makes some profession of faith may be one more who is just saved in the nick of time, as it were. You may not be outlining long-range strategies for developing churches that preach and teach the whole counsel of God. You may simply be going in with the fast forays before the night comes in and the whole business is shut down.

On the other hand, there are some who so stress the blessings we have, the advantages we have in Christ, the gift of the Spirit, and who so stress the how the lordship of Christ is such a wonderful privilege and blessing in our society and in our lives that Christians ought to be prosperous and wealthy and healthy. After all, we are told, is there not healing in the atonement?

The answer to that, incidentally, is yes, of course, there is healing in the atonement. We take entirely the wrong tact, of course, when we say there isn’t. Of course there is healing in the atonement, brothers. There’s also a resurrection body in the atonement, but I haven’t noticed many of those going around. The point is every blessing we shall ever get is gained by the atonement.

The question is not whether or not it’s in the atonement; the question is whether or not we have the right to claim it now. Just as we have not the right to claim resurrection bodies now, we may not have the right to claim healing in every case now, unless you’ve come across any of the other persuasion who has managed to escape death at the age of 150.

No. Ultimately, the question is not what the atonement provides, for after all, the atonement provides everything. The question is … How much of the ultimate blessings of the final kingdom are to be expected and enjoyed among us today and how much is reserved for the Lord’s return? It is the tension between thanking God for what he has provided in the first coming of the Messiah and beseeching God for what is still to come in the second coming of the Messiah that preserves our eschatological balance.

If we go astray on the one side or the other, we will begin to discover wobbles, not only in our theoretical eschatology but in our evangelism, in our church planting, in our ethics, in what we expect from the Lord, in what things we claim from the Lord. On the one hand, we can claim too little and enjoy too little. On the other hand, we can claim too much and become boastful and proud.

In very few areas of doctrine is the entailment more obvious than in this area of doctrine. We need to understand we have received the Holy Spirit as the blessed down payment of the ultimate inheritance, the proof that we are the children of the King, the taste of the ultimate richness in Christ, and the guarantor of all that we will one day have, but we are not promised wealth and prosperity; we are promised opposition and suffering. We are not promised or guaranteed endless health; we are promised opposition and difficulty, and with such things grace.

That is the tension we must live with and learn to expound in the light of the Scriptures. How, then, are we to wait for the coming of the Messiah? Jesus addresses that question directly in these parables before us. The theme of waiting, of course, has in one sense already been introduced by the first of the five parables.

In the text, the one we studied rather briefly at the end of last evening’s session, that parable (verses 42 to 44) deals with the unexpectedness and suddenness of the Lord’s return. The Lord’s return is as unexpected as the intrusion of a thief. But how, beyond that simple warning, are we to wait for the Lord? What is to characterize our waiting for the Lord? The rest of the Olivet Discourse is given over to answering that question.

1. Wait for the Lord Jesus as stewards who must give an account of their service, faithful or otherwise.

The parable is largely self-explanatory. The servant in question is an over-servant, a senior servant. Perhaps not because this parable is addressed only at senior personnel in the church, as it were, but because even the senior servants, even the hierarchy as it were, even those who are over others must be extremely careful in the Lord’s service not to act as tyrants.

They are not to forget they are still only servants (fellow servants). The church is not theirs; they are but the servants, so even if they are senior servants they must not brutalize under-servants. They must not be rapacious. They must not take advantage of others. They must, rather, act under the Lord’s commission, under the Master’s commission, as those who are responsible for the food of the lesser servants.

The good servant, then, is prepared for his lord at any time. He is faithful throughout the delay, and in the end he is highly rewarded, but the wicked servant here calculatingly banks on the master’s further delay on the basis of the master’s already extended delay. Have you noticed that in verse 48? “Suppose the servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time.’ ”

In other words, he notes how long the master has already been away, and on that basis, therefore, he calculates he is going to stay away a little longer, and he begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards, to squander his master’s wealth, to fail to discharge his responsibilities, to become debauched.

This passage, of course, presupposes, therefore, a long delay before the parousia. It presupposes a long delay, but this wicked servant, surprised in his evil, is then consigned an abysmal place with the hypocrites (verse 51). That is to say, he is assigned a place that belongs to him, for he is himself a hypocrite. He is pretending to be a leader, a senior leader in the flock of God, but in fact, it is all sham. It is part of an act. That is not the way the leaders in the flock of God actually act or actually operate. He is consigned a place with those to whom he belongs.

No group of people in Matthew’s gospel is more consistently excoriated, more consistently consigned to weeping and gnashing of teeth than hypocrites. There is always far more compassion in the mind of the Lord Jesus for harlots and publicans and open sinners than there is for hypocrites. Always. If nothing should terrify us and cause us to examine ourselves from time to time, that should.

This wicked servant is cut in pieces, an awful punishment. He joins the hypocrites, we are told, in weeping and grinding of teeth. The weeping indicating suffering and the grinding of teeth despair. The point of the parable is wait for the Lord Jesus as stewards who must give an account of their service, faithful or otherwise.

3. Wait for the Lord Jesus as celebrants who make careful preparation because the celebration may be long delayed.

If you read the commentaries on a passage like this, you will discover, for instance, dispensationalists disagree on whether this parable refers to the pretribulational rapture of the church (so A.C. Gaebelein) or the second advent (so Walvoord). In my judgment, the entire debate imposes essentially alien categories on the text which is simply not interested in locating the timing at all. It is interested only in indicating the entailments of the delay of the bridegroom.

It’s important to understand something of marriage customs in the time of Jesus. If the bride and groom did not live too far apart, which is probably what is presupposed here for a variety of reasons, the groom would walk to the bride’s home. There would be various ceremonies. They would take a few hours to a day or so. Then, when they were over, usually at night, there would be a torch-light procession back to the groom’s home where the marriage proper would take place and the festivities would begin, often for several days and perhaps for a week or so.

On that walk back from the bride’s father’s home to the new groom’s home, then the various guests would join in each with their lamps. These lamps may have been small olive-oil pots. More likely, they were torches. The word here often rendered lamps can equally be rendered torches with the rags on the end and with some small flask of oil that would be doused over the rags now and then in order to keep the torch burning brightly.

Those who then tried to get into the procession without such torches would be considered either brigands or party crashers or the like. They were simply not very welcome. These virgins may have actually been the ancient equivalent of bridesmaids. They may have at first been actually involved in getting the bride ready and so forth, or they may have simply been those who had been invited to join in the procession.

These virgins, then, number 10. The number is of no particular significance. It is a common round number used in many stories in the ancient Near East. The entire plot turns on the delay of the bridegroom. It has nothing to do with sleep, absolutely nothing, for both the wise virgins and the foolish virgins sleep, and there is no blame attached to them for it. It is merely part of the story. It indicates, again, the bridegroom is long delayed. This is not a warning against sleep or something like that.

The foolish virgins, we are told, did not bring oil. Perhaps they did not bring extra oil. It is hard to be quite certain, but eventually the cry goes up, “The bridegroom is coming!” “Ah,” someone says. “Where is the bride?” Isn’t the bride the church? That is simply confusing categories. Like many, many symbols, of course, they can symbolize different things in different contexts.

The lion can be Jesus, the lion of the tribe of Judah. The lion can be the Devil, the lion who goes about roaring and seeking whom he may devour. There is no way you are then going to equate those two. Do you see? There is no automatic connection between one use of a metaphor and another use of a metaphor.

Here the bride is not mentioned because, quite frankly, the bride is irrelevant to the story. Absolutely irrelevant. The cry goes up, the bridegroom comes, and immediately all 10 virgins trim their lamps, but the foolish virgins discover they have an inadequate supply of oil. There is no automatic identification here of oil with grace or automatic identification of oil with good works. Still less with Holy Spirit. There is no easy identification of oil. It is simply a way of indicating the foolish virgins were ill prepared.

They were not prepared for the long delay, so they have to scramble at the last minute, as it were. They have to trot off and buy something. Then, they discover they’ve been left. They’re out. They come bashing on the door. “Let us in! Let us in! Let us in!” Matthew Henry identifies oil with grace. I think he is incorrect, but his statement is astute nevertheless. He says, “They will see their need of grace hereafter when it should save them who will not see their need of grace now when it should sanctify and rule them.”

The intense cries of the foolish virgins are of no avail. The bridegroom’s refusal to let these foolish virgins enter is now not calloused rejection of the foolish virgins’ lifelong desire to enter the kingdom but rather the rejection of those who, despite appearances, never made preparation for the coming of the bridegroom.

“Therefore …” the parable ends, “… keep watch.” Which does not mean “Keep awake,” as if sleep was the point. Simply keep eschatologically alert. Make preparation for a long delay. Brothers, this means our entire strategy in teaching and leading our people is to build disciples who are prepared for a long delay.

We are not simply after scalps. We are not simply after statistics. We are after entire congregations composed of men and women who are going to wait it out, who have oil in their lamps, and who, when the bridegroom is announced, will trim their lamps with joy and enter into the messianic banquet. For those familiar with the teaching of the Lord Jesus, for those who live under the new covenant, for those who are familiar with the teachings of Scripture it is not difficult to fill in this lacuna.

What is presupposed is an enduring faith, a constant communion with the Lord Christ, an appropriation of the promises and Spirit of God by faith, walking in the Spirit, and consistent patterns of obedience developing mature men and women in Christ. These are the ones who are prepared for the Lord when he returns. How, then, are we to wait? Wait for the Lord Jesus as celebrants who make careful preparation because the celebration may be long delayed.

4. Wait for the Lord Jesus as slaves commissioned to improve their master’s assets.

We come now to the parable in verses 14 to 30. This parable, you see, goes beyond the ones we have looked at so far by mandating not only preparedness, not only performance of duty even if there is long delay, but also the improvement of the allotted talents until the day of the Lord.

Some slaves, of course, in the ancient world enjoyed considerable freedom and responsibility. They were not all galley slaves, shackled hand and foot with chains. Many of them were almost like household business managers or the like, having the run of the place, free to come and go in the city and so forth.

Of course, it was certain death if they tried to run away, but many, many senior slaves in the ancient world achieved tremendous power. Sometimes slaves, for instance, were far more educated, far more learned than their masters. They were often the nannies and the schoolteachers. They were often the doctors and others who served large households and so forth.

In this instance, the slaves in question are at various status with various capacities discerned by the master. Now this master, about to go on some long journey, imparts to these three typical slaves here various amounts of wealth, telling them to handle it on his behalf. He apparently dispenses his money variously according to his perception of their ability.

That’s rather interesting, too. It is not an automatic doling out of, “Five talents for you, five talents for you, five talents for you, and five talents for you,” or the like. Rather, the text explicitly tells us he gives out his property each according to the slave’s ability. This is a wise and discerning master as he makes preparation for his journey.

If you are reading from the NIV, you will notice in the footnote a talent is alleged to be more than $1,000. Like most such remarks, this is simply hopelessly out of date. The talent in the ancient world could be made up of gold or of silver or of copper or bronze, but the word is most commonly associated with silver talents, so let’s take that. You cannot keep an accurate count by weighing the amount of silver because silver itself fluctuates.

The best way of measuring money in the ancient world in order to compare it with where we are today is by assessing purchasing power and earning power. A silver talent was made up of 6,000 denarii. A denarius was worth about one common day laborer’s wage, a foot soldier’s wage. Let’s say at the low end of the scale, $15,000 a year. That’s $300,000. One talent. This is a great deal of money. Five talents are $1.5 million here.

Great wealth has been poured out on these people, and they are told to work with it as the master’s money. We are told, “At once the man who had received the five talents began to put his money to work.” This does not mean he went and invested it in money market funds. To put your money to work in the ancient world meant you started a business. You got into buying and trading, selling some kind of thing where you were involved in hard work yourself. That was what it meant to put your money to work. He got into business.

The time went by. The master was long delayed. Lo and behold, pretty soon instead of $1.5 million he had $3 million. Meanwhile, the chap who had $600,000 improved it until finally he had $1.2 million or thereabouts. “After a long time,” we read in verse 19, again another hint that the parousia might be long delayed. “After a long time, the master returns.” He settles accounts with these men. The man who had five talents brought the other five. “Master,” he said, “you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.”

What does the master tell him? The faithful servant is rewarded with two things: first, increased responsibility, and second, a large share of his master’s joy. That is to say, of entrance in non-parabolic terms into the consummated kingdom with all the bliss that state promises. Moreover, exactly the same reward is given to the man with two talents. Whether it is exactly the same share of increased responsibility we cannot judge, but he was given increased responsibility, and he was given holy delight.

Then the wicked servant comes. His charge against his master is that the master is exploitative, grasping. He says the master uses the labor of others for his own gain. Perhaps, in fact, he charges the master with putting the servant into an insidious position. If the servant, for example, starts putting the money into a business and the business goes down and the servant loses his master’s money, who is going to be held to account?

If, on the other hand, the market goes up and the servant does well and he makes a lot of money, who gets the money? In the one case, it’s the servant who gets the blame; in the other, it’s the master who gets the wealth. Is that fair? “You are a hard man, master. You are exploitative. You corrupt labor. All right. If you’re going to give me some of your money, I’ll tell you what I’ll do with it. I’ll put it in a hole in the ground, and when you come back, you can have it. It’s yours. Don’t bother me with it.”

What this wicked servant overlooks is his responsibility. In other words, the master and the servant are not two business gentleman on a par. The one is the servant to the other. The master has entrusted this servant with certain responsibilities, and even on the servant’s own recognition of the master’s hardness, the very least the servant should have done, if he is going to be any kind of faithful albeit cynical servant, is to have put the money out to get interest. At the very least, faithfulness to the master requires that.

Instead, there is not only an interpretation of his master’s hardness that is at stake, there is a kind of cheap vindictiveness to this servant. There was a fundamental and a principial refusal to acknowledge his responsibilities as a servant, and his responsibilities as a servant consist of improving the assets of his master.

In other words, the foolish virgins failed from thinking their part too easy, but here, the wicked servant fails from thinking his too hard. Grace never condones irresponsibility. Even those given less gifts are obligated to use and develop what they have. As a result, what is required quite clearly for us is not mere passive watchfulness but the improvement of the gifts and graces God gives us.

It is not enough to sit through our lifetime if, please God, the Spirit of God works all around us while we sit at home praying for the Lord’s return. It is not enough to sit and wait for the Lord’s return if, please God, he returns in our lifetime and we say, “We have been waiting in sanctified restraint, in sanctified retreat.”

For the Lord will ask us, “Yes, but what have you done with the assets I gave you? What have you done with the energy you had from the food with which I provided you? What have you done from the learning you received? What have you done with the friends and training and opportunities you had? What have you done with the freedom you have in this country? What have you done with all of those printed Bibles? What have you done with your incredible wealth?”

We are wealthy compared to the vast majority of the Christians in the world. “What have you done with your money? What have you done with your time? How many hours have you wasted in front of the television set? What have you done with your people? Have you poured yourself into people? What have you done with your personality? Have you improved it?

What have you done with your strengths, your speaking skills, your understanding, your intelligence, your ability to get on with people? What have you done with the vast array of things with which I have entrusted you? After all, what have you but what you receive?” God holds us accountable to improve his assets. We are to wait, therefore, as faithful servants commissioned to improve our master’s assets.

5. Wait for the Lord Jesus as people whose lives are so unselfconsciously transformed by the gospel that they are characterized by self-sacrificing service to brothers and sisters in Christ.

Of course, this parable before us (the parable of the sheep and the goats) in chapter 25, verses 31 and following has become a bit of a cause celebre in recent years. A large part of the debate has turned on the precise reference behind the word brothers in verses 40 and 45.

When Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me,” what does he mean? If you read Sojourners magazine or Third Way or Ron Sider, you will gain the impression these least brothers of mine are the poor. There is a kind of bias in the gospel toward the poor.

I hasten to insist most strongly the Scriptures do say a great deal about the poor. There is much we could learn from the Proverbs in an extraordinarily balanced way by listing all the texts in the Proverbs that deal with the poor. There, the poor are sometimes classified as those who are poor because they’re lazy, sometimes because they’re put upon and exploited, sometimes because they’re ill or otherwise disadvantaged.

Their poverty is neither glorified nor is it despised. “Better to be poor,” we are told, “than rich and corrupt.” On the other hand, the writer can also ask for not too much money or not too much poverty because too much money corrupts and too much poverty may well breed greed and despair and even theft.

There is a great deal in Scripture about poverty that we need to hear in our affluent West, but with all respect, I am not persuaded this text is dealing with poverty in general terms. A great deal turns on the precise force of the word brothers. I would be prepared to argue at some length the word does not mean all who are hungry, weak, and distressed, nor does it mean as some have argued on the other extreme only the apostles, as if this text is arguing what you do with the apostles determines your eternal destiny.

Here reference is often made to chapter 10, verses 40 to 42, where if you receive one of Jesus’ followers (his disciples, presumably, at least in the first instance), the apostles, you receive Jesus. Nor does it refer in the first instance to Jews converted during the tribulation or something like that. It simply misses the point of the parable.

No. In the Scriptures brothers refers to one of three groups in the New Testament. First, your natural brother or near kinsman; secondly, to genuine brothers in Christ; and thirdly, in a very few instances, to those who are perhaps not genuine brothers in Christ but who are, at least, punitive brothers in Christ. There are some references of that sort, for instance, in 1 John.

In other words, these least brothers of Christ are here those who belong to Christ who are most despised, most distressed, most put upon, in greatest difficulty in the world. That kind of use of brother becomes very obvious, for instance, in the closing verses of Matthew, chapter 12. There Jesus says, “ ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ Pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and my sister and my mother.’ ”

So the parable begins. We are told, “The Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him.” A clear reference back to chapter 24, verses 29 to 31. The second coming of Christ. “All the nations are gathered before him, and there the Son of Man separates the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep and the goats.”

Of course, in the ancient world, many times during the day sheep and goats were mingled together in common pasturage, but because the sheep could manage quite nicely at night on many occasions without actually being huddled together for warmth, whereas the goats by contrast had to be huddled together when it was cold, they could often be separated at night and divided into two separate flocks.

That is the image, of course, that would have been very common to anyone living in the first century. The Son of Man quickly becomes the King in verse 34 because, of course, this is the Son of Man who receives a kingdom from the Father in Daniel, chapter 7. There he separates the people.

The thing that is most overlooked to the interpretation of this passage is the surprise of both groups when Jesus tells them of their fate and the reason for it. The matter is greatly stressed and almost always overlooked. “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?’ ” Then again in verse 44, we also are told, “ ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes?” What does this surprise suggest? Three important things.

First, neither group is surprised at their standing but only at the reason for it. This is not some warrant for believing on the last day people who all their lives have thought they were going to be saved won’t be or people who all their lives thought they were lost will suddenly find out, “Oh! I’m saved after all.”

In the first place, we wouldn’t square with the multitudinous number of verses that insist we may have assurance of our salvation even now and cry with expectation and hope for the Lord’s return. These people are not surprised at their status; they are surprised at the reason for their status.

Secondly, the surprise of the righteous makes it perfectly clear they do not think of their works as meritorious efforts to gain salvation. If they had thought of their works as meritorious efforts to gain salvation, then of course, they would not be surprised. They would say, “Well, I got my reward. I’m here because I deserved it.” In fact, whatever these works signify, they are completely strange in the minds of these sheep so far as the master’s appeal to them is concerned for the basis of their entrance into the sheepfold as opposed to the goat herd.

Thirdly, and the most important point of all, this means the passage provides a test that eliminates the possibility of hypocrisy. That’s the whole point. If the Lord had simply provided a test that you could duplicate or somehow sneak up on, if the Lord had promulgated in advance, “If you do certain good deeds to certain good people, you are in the sheep,” do you not think all the goats would go out and do a few good deeds?

The point, however, is by virtue of what these people are they naturally do good things to the Lord’s people. That’s what they do. They are the Lord’s people, so when they see the Lord’s people in distress, their whole inclination is to go to them in gentleness and compassion. They bind up their wounds.

If they see some of the Lord’s people hungry, they cannot bear the possibility this should be so, so they dig deeply into their pockets and pour out their wealth in order that the Lord’s people might have adequate provision. If they find some who are naked, then, of course, they clothe them. They can’t imagine doing anything else.

However kind and however generous the outsider is, he simply does not see the Lord’s people that way. He may be compassionate and give to Oxfam now and then, but he has no distinctive, built-in, structural change in his life that makes him want above all to identify with the Lord’s people in compassion, in gentleness, in integrity, in generosity.

There is no personal holiness that breeds that kind of identification with the people of God, and because Jesus identifies himself with the people of God, when we act this way toward the people of God we are acting toward him. That is why Saul could hear the words on the Damascus road, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?” That is why, likewise, in Matthew, chapter 5, verses 10 and 12, when the Christians are being persecuted it is because they are doing righteousness for Jesus’ sake.

In a sense, in other words, sins of omission here become the crucial factor. The sins of omission on the part of the goats are attested in particular in the way they handle the Lord’s people. They don’t have time for the Lord’s people, and that’s proof positive they don’t have time for the Lord. The sheep love the Lord’s people and respond to them in endless compassion and generosity, and that proves positively that they belong to the Lord. “Then the goats will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

It is important, of course, to notice the word rendered eternal can simply mean of the age or of the messianic age, but because the messianic age is lived before the eternal, the everlasting God, the word has notions of everlastingness built into it in certain contexts, and here the punishment is as eternal as the life.

We should always, in our understanding of such texts, remember there are degrees of felicity in heaven as there are degrees of punishment in hell. Some will be beaten with more stripes and some with fewer. It is important also to remember in the Scriptures never, ever is there ever a hint that those in hell will repent and sue for grace. In hell there is no repentance. There is only ongoing sin and ongoing punishment attracted to that ongoing sin forever, in an inward spiral of malefaction and curse.

How then shall we apply this test to ourselves? In the book of 1 John, it is very interesting to note there are three tests that are given the people of God. One is the truth test. In this instance, a christological test bound up with the truthfulness that Jesus is Lord. The second is a moral test. What kind of life you are living in obedience to his commands. The third test is a love test. You love the brothers.

Where does that come from? It comes from the teaching of Jesus. I suggest to you, brothers, in many circles in North America the love test is elevated above the truth test. In our circles, there is far greater danger of elevating the truth test above the love test. But the tests in Scripture in 1 John are so absolute that, in fact, it is not the best two out of three and you choose the two.

It is extremely important that we who believe the truth, who articulate the truth, who struggle with our exegesis in order to expound the Word of God fairly, who hunger with all of our lives to expound the whole Word of God should not only live moral lives, which point we also insist upon, but love the brothers, and that does not simply mean the brothers who agree with us. It means the genuine brothers, especially those who are distressed.

That, too, is the teaching of God, and on that basis too there will be an automatic test at the Lord’s return, for we are to wait for the Lord Jesus as people whose lives are so unselfconsciously transformed by the gospel that they are characterized by self-sacrificial service to brothers and sisters in Christ.

In other words, these are not people who are trying to do good deeds or trying to love in order to win the kingdom, but we will be surprised on the end day because we will look back and we will say, “Yes! I did identify with the people of God, didn’t I? That, of course, is not the reason why I am in; it is the test that shows I do belong to the sheep.”

We must ask ourselves and our people constantly, “Is this is a test of great importance to me, to my people, that I hold up before their eyes with equal rigor to the truth tests of Scripture?” We are to wait for the Lord Jesus as people whose lives are so unselfconsciously transformed by the gospel that they are characterized by self-sacrificial service to brothers and sisters in Christ.

“It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.

On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.

The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.

He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”