Profitable
His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. Matthew 25:21
Working in small business means looking at every piece of equipment, every worker, every product and analyzing its profitability. Is it adding to the bottom line or subtracting from it? When it becomes obvious something is a problem, we have to move quickly to remove it before our profits suffer due to it. Sometimes that means replacing an older piece of equipment, sometimes that means replacing a person who isn’t doing his/her job, or moving them to a different job where they might be of service.
In Matthew chapter 25, we see the parable of the talents. Jesus tells us about three servants who have been given money from their master to take care of while he is away. The servants are given talents “according to their abilities”. The servant who is given 5 talents trades with them and gains 5 more… similarly, the servant who is given 2 talents takes his and also doubles his master’s money. The third servant was afraid and hid his talent in a hole. By choosing the safer path, he fails to bring any profit to his master.
The master in this case trusted his servant with various sums of money. A little research reveals that a talent of gold was approximately 33kg of gold. At today’s prices that comes to $1,967,262, very nearly 2 million dollars, so we aren’t talking about a little pocket change. These were servants that were trusted with large sums of money, and expected to take care of it accordingly. Verse 27 of Matthew 25 indicates that if the servant had placed the money with the exchangers the master would have at least received interest (usary). So, basically the servant did worse than nothing, he robbed his master of the minimum he could have expected from basic good care.
The two faithful servants were rewarded with more responsibilities, and one would assume, more benefits. They proved their faithfulness to the master and he made a way to use them more. The fearful servant had even the smaller responsibility removed from him. In short, he allowed fear to rob both himself and his master of growth and blessings.
How do we apply this parable to our lives? The first thing we need to do is prepare ourselves to be obedient when opportunity presents itself, by being obedient with the obvious things God has asked us to do. There are very obvious ways a Christian should behave, these equate roughly with the ‘very least’ we should do as followers of Christ:
We’ve all been given certain gifts and abilities. Once we have given ourselves to Christ and received our salvation we have some responsibilities. First, we are to grow and learn. Of course, this is a continual process that should never stop, but, we are also to get to work. We should never take the gift of salvation that we’ve received and hide it in a hole.
If we are to become more and more Christ-like, we have to get to work. Christ did not come to earth only to die and save us from our sins, he came to be the ultimate example for us. He came to show us how to treat others, how to explain his gifts, how to be about the Father’s business. No person or act of service was too lowly for Him. He repeatedly reminded us that.
We cannot allow fear of failure to stop us from working for the Lord. Recently, opportunities to witness to people have been popping up for me. For a long time, I was afraid to say anything about my faith to people when the opportunity was clearly there. As I step forward and put myself out there, I’ve been amazed that words have come. Verses pop into my head. I’m still very uncomfortable, but I’m working on it. It’s amazing how the Holy Spirit will provide a thought that fits into the conversation.
Looking at Christ’s sacrifice for us from a business standpoint, Christ made eternity’s largest investment when he gave himself for us. I would imagine that he would like a return on his investment. What return did He have in mind when He sacrificed himself to gain our souls? He wants a relationship with us. It seems contrary to good business practices that He would. Does He need us? No, of course not! That’s the best part of our relationship with Him. He doesn’t need us, but He wants us. In fact, He desires a relationship with His creation so much that he was willing to put on a fleshly body and come down to become the perfect blood sacrifice for our sins.
So, what are we to do with this investment God has made in us? We are the beneficiaries of His work, and He gives that grace to us freely… BUT… once we have recognized our dependence upon Him, submitted ourselves fully to His Lordship in our lives, and realized the incredible gift we’ve been given, I think we naturally want to give back out of pure gratitude. The secret is to keep that excitement going, to continue to build our relationship with Christ through careful study of His word and active worship. To live for Him, to focus on Him, to set our minds on Him. Be faithful over the little things, friends, and watch Him provide the big ones.
