Faith & Finance Fridays
Reflect • Commit • Equip • Apply

Matthew 25:14-30
Faith Isn’t Measured in Numbers

Apply: Our Talents Will Multiple

During these last four weeks, we’ve spent time with Matthew 25:14-30, reflecting on the role of the often-overlooked servant who received two talents. He demonstrates that it’s not how much we have, but what we do with it that shows our commitment to God’s plan. We also talked about simple ways we can equip ourselves to multiple our talents. This week, we’ll wrap up our study on the Parable of Talents and see how, by applying ourselves to faithfully steward that which we’ve been given, our talents will multiply themselves.

There’s one aspect of this parable we haven’t fully discussed: trust. Trust is faith. By affirming our faith in God we’re saying that we trust in Him. However, no matter our faith, many of us shy away from using the word trust.

Faith has become the natural language of the unseen. The things we speak of having faith in, God and Scripture, are beyond our physical grasp. The word faith gives us a certain amount of conceptual distance because we can’t hold it in our hands, and its blessings and consequences aren’t always obvious.

In many ways, trust is similarly conceptual; we can’t touch it any more than we can touch faith. However, it’s a word that we use for concrete matters that are much closer to ordinary life. We trust our partners, trust our friends will be there when we call, trust the bank to keep our money safe, trust doctors to heal us…Trust takes something we cannot see and places something tangible in its care. That sense of realness can make us hesitate to even use the word when speaking of the intangible.

Money is tangible. We can see it, count it, save it, spend it, invest it…and lose it. When we talk about trusting God with our finances, we're bringing an invisible conviction into a very visible part of our lives. That opens the door to fear. Yet if we allow faith and trust to truly be one and the same and place ourselves, including our finances, in God’s hands, there’s no more room for that fear.

“For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.” – Matthew 25:29

In this parable, we see trust flowing both ways. Before he left, the master entrusted his three servants with his money and rewarded the two who repaid that trust. So too does God place His trust in us.

“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave.You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things ...’” – Matthew 25:23

We spoke before about how each of the three servants received talents according to his ability. The servant who received the most did so because had already proven his ability and trustworthiness. If we do the same, place ourselves in God’s hands full of faith and trust and without fear, show ourselves faithful—trustworthy—with a few things, we will be put in charge of many and our talents will multiple.

Reflection Question:

What would we do differently with our money if we truly trusted God with it, and what keeps us from doing those things now?

Next Week:

Next week, we leave Matthew to explore Malachai 3:8-10 and examine what it means to rob God.