A mina was a currency denomination in the ancient world worth roughly 100 days wages. Not a huge amount of money, but enough to invest. In Jesus’ parable ten servants of the king were each given a mina to invest or work. When the king returned there were two who put their minas to work. The results were praiseworthy. The king in his wisdom gave the hard working servants command of an equal number of cities as the number of minas they earned. However there was a third servant who didn’t earn anything with his mina. He didn’t actually do anything. He didn’t even give the mina to a banker so that he might make a little interest. His reasoning is… he was afraid? Listen to his own words. “Then another servant came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. 21 I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.’ ” He sounds afraid doesn’t he? You almost feel sorry for the guy, until you looks at what he said, and what he didn’t do, a little closer.
His problem with the king was that he was making money off of his servants! He wasn’t about to be a part of that so in an ironic move the 3rd servant takes the mina and wraps it up in a dew rag – a cloth worn or used to wipe the sweat away from a laborer’s brow – and buries it in the ground! The mina is the gospel. Compare Jesus’ words on verse 26 from our text and his words from chapter 8 on God’s word.
It is Last Judgment Sunday. How do you feel about the coming apocalypse? I have to say I’m looking forward to it. I’m not looking forward to the coming judgment as described in our first lesson from the prophet Ezekiel.
I am excited to meet my Lord, but when I speak with people that isn’t always the reaction I get. On this Veteran’s Day weekend I have to share with you that this past week I had to privilege to meet a D-Day Veteran, Ray Lambert. HERE is his story. His book is terrifying. In it he detailed that after three years of combat he had never met his son and he didn’t know his wife. He wondered. “Does she really want me back?” You would think so, but… how can you know? I wonder if that is how we view God. Does he want me? We know what we’ve done.
In the children’s message this morning I posed a question to the kids – what if you did something wrong? What should you do. One child said confess. The another child said run away. Confess is the proper answer, but I know that people run from God. Part of me wants to do that every time I sin!
The truth is that Jesus has paid for our debt. We can look forward to the judgment.
Want to hear more including the proper attitude as the Last Day approaches? Watch this week’s sermon taken from Luke 19.
Book(s): Luke
Tag(s): End Times
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg