The Parable of the Talents, Matthew 25,14-30, "What Did You Get?"

The Parable of the Talents and the Long Delay Before Christ Returns

Matthew chapter 25, starting in verse 14, hear the word of the Lord. It will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.

Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more, but he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money.

Now after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with him, and he who had received the five talents came forward bringing five talents more, saying, Master, you delivered to me five talents.

Here I have made five talents more. His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. And he who also had the two talents came forward saying, Master, you delivered to me two talents.

Here I have made two talents more. His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. He also who had received the one talent came forward saying, Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed.

So I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours. But his master answered him, You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I scattered no seed.

Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers. And at my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents.

For to everyone who has will more be given and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, Christmas and New Year is now over. The gifts have been given and opened and maybe even some returned, I wonder. If I went around and I asked, what did you get?

I wonder if we get any surprising news. Well, I told Mary that I'm probably the only Baptist pastor in the area to get a bottle of wine for Christmas. I appreciate the thought and the gift. Well, what did you get?

The Call to Faithful Stewardship of God’s Gifts

It's also the type of year in which people make New Year's resolutions, often to make more themselves and often to try to undo some of the damage they did during the Christmas time when they were indulging.

Maybe to be resolving, maybe to be in better shape or stop some bad habit hurting them. So dieting plans and aids to stop smoking are now on TV a lot. There's a lot of ads for that. The idea is that now we've indulged ourselves and gained some pounds by eating too much.

Now we need to apply ourselves, make more of ourselves by physically making less of ourselves, I guess. Now for many people, this is really a contrast. You know, we've gone from one extreme to another.

From the season of indulgence and getting gifts and things we want and buying what we want, never mind the debt and eating whatever we want, never mind the fat. And now this dreary January. Oh, eating the tiny portions these weight loss plans allow.

No more desserts. Cut back on the spending, especially when that credit card bill comes due. Cut something out. Hitting the treadmill or the weight rooms to work off those pounds. We've gone right from the season of getting things to the season of giving up things.

And we think those are opposites. Well, that's sort of the average person going from extremes of fasting to feasting, saving to splurging and working for the weekend. But there are others, of course, who never seem to get to the discipline part, you know, the resolution part.

They may be too lazy and self-indulgent to ever save or to sacrifice or to work very hard for anything. You know, today in many places it's considered kind of ill-mannered, unsophisticated, even sort of barbaric to criticize people for being lazy.

Even the word is just almost becoming like an obscenity. Lazy. You don't hear it that much. Lazy as a criticism is a condemnation. It's just rarer and rarer. Oh, some might be criticized for being workaholics.

You're a workaholic. Cut back. Stop working so hard. But fewer criticize these days, it seems to me, for not working enough. Get to work, you lazy bum, with a kick. I remember in seminary having a European friend, a European friend who said that we Westerners, and he included us Americans in that, just couldn't keep up with those East Asians who work so hard.

I remember thinking, hey, I'm working 17 hours a day here. You speak for yourself. A few years later, I was in Singapore describing the Puritan work ethic. You know, the Puritans worked hard at everything they did.

And a Chinese Singaporean student there said, you know, we already work hard. What more are we supposed to do? And that was a good question I didn't have a good answer for at the moment. Many work. There are those who aren't lazy and who will work, but for the long-term goal of spending.

Yeah, some want to work maybe a day or two and then for the work weekend, but some for the long-term goal, they're willing to work for 34 years for the long-term goal of spending, maybe for retirement to get a vacation home and an easy life after years of earning it.

They may be afraid to lose then in the short term, they'll hold on to every cent they have. Maybe they'll stuff it away in their mattress, afraid the banks will go under, afraid society will collapse, afraid something will happen.

And so too afraid to do anything really except to hunker down, stock up, and wait. Here the Lord Jesus deals with all these kinds of people, the ones who go from one extreme to another, the lazy who never get out of the indulging, and then those who just work and deprive themselves our whole life.

He deals with all these kinds of people and with us, and he tells us, speaking about the end, and remember the context of this passage, he's continuing talking about the end times, and here talking about the end, he tells us what we need to know for the beginning of another year, the beginning of what may be a long wait.

He gives us, here he gives us some of God's math, okay? Many people when it comes to the end times just love to calculate things. They'll find codes and hidden dates and, you know, when things are going to happen.

Of course, they always prove wrong, but they'll keep working at it. They'll be very disciplined, hard working about that. This is part of, and what Jesus teaches us here, what the passage we read, and remember, is part of this long answer that Jesus gave to the disciples' question that begins chapter 24, you know, when will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming?

They ask him that, and he, all of chapter 24, now still in all of chapter 25, is answering that, and people are often interested in the mathematics of Jesus's return. They want to precisely answer, never mind that he said over and over again, no one knows the day or the hour, but they forget that.

They'll look for the math, and here Jesus does give us a lesson in math. He tells us how God adds, how we should multiply, how Christ divides, and finally how God adds some more and subtracts. First, God adds.

Here, Jesus is again dealing with what we're to be doing during the long delay. You notice that the master goes away, and after a long delay, it says he comes back before, and that this is, so this is telling us what we're to be doing before Christ returns.

Now, all those scoffers today often mock, you know, the early church, those Christians, they've always thought Jesus is going to return anytime soon. Actually, he teaches a great deal, and he taught right, these disciples a great deal right from the beginning, that there's going to be a long delay, and what they're supposed to be doing during this long delay, and this teaching the parable of the talents is another lesson in that.

In verse 19, Jesus again says, after a long time, that's what Jesus is teaching us here, what are we to be doing during that long time? He begins in verse 14 with, for it will be like, it meaning his return, or what's happening before he returns, it will be like, that is, the end is like a wealthy man going on a journey, and he entrusts his wealth to reliable, what he hopes anyway, are reliable servants, and here he adds to three servants.

He gives to one five talents, to another two talents, and to another one, just one talent, and two questions here, what does God add, and then how does God add it? Now, what does God add? Now, first, literally, a talent, because we may be a little confused, because this is a word we have in English, but first we need to know what it originally meant.

A talent was a measure of weight, a weight for money, particularly of silver and gold. That's usually the way they measured their money in those days. They didn't have like a bill that had how much it was worth printed on it, or usually, often not even a coin, they just weighed it.

How much does the gold or the silver weigh, and that's how much it's worth, and a talent was a large weight. It was about 60 to 80 pounds, not quite sure, but it's a good amount, and so it's a lot of money.

I mean, you can imagine 60 pounds of gold, that's worth a lot, and so if it's silver, which most commentators seem to think this is, then this is worth hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million dollars, so let's put it there, round it up to a good million dollars per talent, so the guy that gets five talents is getting five million dollars.

Here, that's yours, take good care of it. So, this is a lot of the masters entrusting with these servants. Now, that's what it is literally. Now, what is it to us? What does Jesus mean it to symbolize?

Jesus is the wealthy man who's going on a long journey, and we are the servants. Now, what are the talents that we are entrusted with? Maybe we'd prefer to be entrusted with five million dollars. You know, we could live off the interest at least, right?

First, someone to say that, well, it's, you know, kind of make it very spiritual, that it's the gospel, and we've been entrusted with the wealth of the gospel, and we need to make more of it, and that he will return after a long time and reward those who made more of it, and then punish those who just kind of sat on it and didn't do anything.

That's one interpretation of what the talents represent, and I believe that that is true, but not yet. That's ultimately where we should get at. The problem with that is that in this parable, the servants are given different amounts of talents, you know, five and two and one.

How can you be given different amounts of the gospel? So, it really doesn't make much sense to say the talents represent the gospel. What, is someone given five gospels? What does that mean? That doesn't work.

So, because the servants are given different amounts of talents, the talents symbolize what we use the word talent for. We may not, I don't know, maybe, I hope you all know this, but the word talent comes from this passage.

Our English word talent comes from this very parable. This is its origin, and because people understood what it was talking about, anything that God gives you is a talent. It's a gift from God, and you're going to make more of it, personal gifts and abilities of all kinds, even of money, the money you might have, of anything that we have been given.

Talents are talents. That's not so hard, is it? I've actually heard Christians, though, object to the idea. Talents here can't be talents, because so many Christians can't imagine that God first has given them the gifts and the things that they have, you know, whatever it is, whether it be musical skill or teaching ability or the money that they have in the bank, the property they own, their business, their intelligence, their social skills, their athletic ability, their opportunities they have to learn or to grow or to teach and to give.

You know, so many people can't imagine that God gave them those things. They think, you know, they see what they did. I went to work. I earned the money. That money in the bank is mine. I earned it. They don't see God behind it, and even some Christians kind of, unfortunately, think that way.

It's a very secular way of looking at the world. They think natural talents are just accidents of our DNA. So what? I was born. I can run faster. I was born with the, you know, I can learn languages quickly, something like that, or maybe achievements through our hard work.

They're just natural. They weren't, we often think, they weren't gifts from a supernatural God, but if we think that way, we're wrong. Everything about us that is useful, the sin is not a gift from God.

That we came up with ourself, but everything that's about us that's useful, whether the skill to, you know, to paint a building well, to perform a song well, or maybe the self-control and the discipline to run a business properly takes a lot of self-control.

You know, you have this money. You invest it. You got to spend it on all kinds of things for the business instead of just going out and, you know, nicest restaurants and spending on yourself. Self-control to develop a business.

The ability to hit a three-point shot or run a five-minute mile or play an instrument or write well or cook a good meal or the character to show up week after week to drive a vehicle to support a ministry or to study for exams or to stay late at a job when you'd rather just go play.

Or the shrewdness to know how to invest your money or how to sell a product to guide a conversation that wins people over instead of putting them off. Every imaginable talent that we can think of is a talent here in this passage that Jesus is talking about.

Now, the church has often lost sight of this because so many Christians apparently believe that, you know, often preaching is the only real talent they can think of, the only talent that matters. So, they'll call the pastor the preacher and the main service is the preaching service and come for a lay at 11 a .m. preaching as though the singing and the praying and having the Lord's Supper or even reaching out or just being a church together or even just living as a Christian throughout the week as though none of that matters.

And so, the result is that some people can't imagine that the talents that they have mean much of anything. They can serve and they can keep the facilities and the functioning and encourage others or they can give or they can sing or they can teach or they can witness, they can do all kind, they can drive a vehicle, they can do all kinds of important things but they don't really believe that those are talents because they don't believe those are the talents that God is concerned with because they think God is only concerned with maybe just these really few spiritual things that only a few rare people have.

They don't understand what they've got. Well, what did you get? What has been added to us? Oh, talents. Now, how does he add them to us? Notice in verse 15 that the master distributes to his servants, it says, to each according to his ability and even the ability comes from God too but that's not the point.

That is, the master gave to the servants according to their capacity at handling what was given to them. He gave to the first servant the most, five talents, because he expected the most from him and people may be equal in rights and value but we understand, got to understand the fact, people are not always equal in ability.

Some have just enormous ability, sometimes there's some few people have a lot of abilities in a lot of different areas. I'm not one of those but some are. Now, those who have more ability have that because they had that added to them and they have a lot of ability, they have a lot of talents added to them.

God has added two of them. Now, that could be a recipe for exploitation and oppression. You know, for some people, a lot of ability, I have all these abilities, God has favored me, you should just do what I say, serve me.

That leads to that kind of oppression only if we forget what comes next. God adds but we are responsible to multiply. We are supposed to make more of our talents. Yes, talents are given to each according to his ability but with ability comes responsibility, not just rights but responsibility.

Like a famous saying, and this may be the only time from a sermon I ever quote Karl Marx but here it is. Like Karl Marx said, from each according to his ability to each according to his need. Now, what that gets right and we'll talk about what that gets wrong a little bit later but what that gets right to each according to his ability is that the more ability we have, actually it's from each according to his ability, the more ability we have, that is the more talents that we have, the more expectations are placed on us.

More was expected from the servant who was given five talents. That's why he was given five talents. More was expected of him than the one to whom the master just gave one or even the one he gave two.

Even though the one did two, he did just as well as the one who got the five. Well, as Jesus says elsewhere, everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.

Okay, you've been entrusted a lot, more is required of you. That's in Luke chapter 12 verse 48. So, the more you have, either the more money you have or the smarter you are, the more skills you have or even the ability to acquire new skills, then the more is expected of you.

That doesn't mean you should just coast by. A lot of money, you can just live off the interest, you know, wake up late every day. No, you have more responsibility to serve God first and people second.

So, with every talent or every dollar or every bit of knowledge that has been added to you, more expectations are placed on you. So, being ready for his return consists not only, as many people think, just, well, I don't want to be caught, you know, in some kind of sin, keeping our slate clean.

It's more than just staying out of trouble, but also it means in this long wait, that's what he's talking about. The master is going to return. Stay active, be responsible, faithful service, which produces results.

We make more of everything that God has given to us. If it's athletic ability, train it. If it's academic skill, educate it. If business opportunities, grow them. If social skills, develop them. We learn from Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people.

Learn, learn those things. If making money, work at it. If singing, develop your voice. Practice. If teaching, well, learn teaching techniques to do it better. We take the gift that God has added to us and multiply it.

And then, finally, that first interpretation is true. We use our talents, whatever it is, to spread the gospel of the kingdom. If in sports, you know, like Eric Little, we glorify God in athletic excellence.

He had a legalistic kind of sister who thought he was just displeasing God and almost sinning by spending so much time in his athletics. And he finally got to get alone with her and say, I'm going to be a missionary, but first I need to do this.

I need to run. And he said, when I run, I feel his pleasure. Because that was something he had been given a talent to do, to run, and he could feel himself pleasing God, God being pleased, entering into the joy of his master when he developed that talent.

And, of course, it led to him going to the Olympics, refusing to run on what he believed was the Sabbath, standing up for what he believed, which actually put him in another race, which it turns out he was even better in, and he won the gold medal in that.

He entered into the joy of his master. Do it for the Lord. If it's in school, you don't just study. Kids don't just go to school just so you can get the best grades in school, so you can go to the best college, so you can get the best job and make the most money.

It's great to go to the best schools, but you go there, first of all, to love the Lord your God with your mind, okay? If in business, we're not just interested in acquiring great wealth so we can spend it on ourselves one day and buy that retirement home that we always wanted.

This is what that Singaporean asked me that I couldn't quite get right about 20 years ago. You know, we're already working hard, he said. We're good at business. What more do you expect of us? Well, do it for the Lord.

As John Wesley said, earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can. Take the treasure that God has added to you and multiply it for the kingdom of God, not just for your retirement, not just for your glory.

It's not just for you to splurge on yourself. You know, that's the worldly self-centered way of looking at it. You know, you make money to get a bigger house, a nicer car, maybe more leisure time, all for yourself.

You're a champion in sports to glorify yourself, get that medal hung around your neck, or you're an American idol in singing because you want to be idolized. You win friends and influence people to use them for yourself.

You know, I can win their vote or their favors or their contracts. That's so common. That's what the Chinese-Singaporean person was asking me. You know, they knew how to do that already. They were throwing themselves into that, but that's not what Jesus is talking about here.

Jesus is talking about stewardship. These things that you've been given are given by God, and he's coming back, and he wants to know, what have you done with them for me? He's coming back for them. Have you made more of them for him?

It's not as though you're just the owner and you can do with it what you want. You're not. So, using our talents for ourselves, for our own enrichment and pleasure, that's all wrong. God has added to us gifts that he expects us to multiply and use those gifts for him at the beginning of another year.

So, our question then should be not, you know, how am I going to pay for all the indulgence? I've just, you know, put on the credit card for the gifts I bought from Christmas time or doing whatever I wanted, or how can I make more of myself this year?

Get rid of the fat that I acquired, but how can I use what I got or will get for God? After all, Jesus used what he got at Christmas, didn't he? He got a human life for us. He used it to purchase us, and he did that for God's glory to make worshipers.

Now, we should do the same with whatever we got. What did you get, by the way? In verse 19, finally, after a long time, the master returns and he settles accounts with the servants. Notice in verse 20, it's kind of a picture.

It appears they're like all there, lined up, and first comes forward the one who had received the five talents. He doubled his investment. This guy should have got a job in Wall Street. He's commended.

He had multiplied what was given to him. During all that time that the master was away, you know, he didn't waste the money. He could have said, hey, you know, five million bucks. I can live pretty well on this for a while.

The one who had received two talents did the same. He doubling the principal, and again, a hundred percent return. He too is praised, well done, and he too is designated a good and faithful servant. And so, what this parable teaches us is the great value that God puts on two things.

One is faithfulness. The second is hard work. The first two servants are praised for being good and faithful, for continuing to work, even when no one is looking, right? The master's not over their shoulder making sure they're doing what they're supposed to do.

He's long. He's way far away. When the master was away, they could have just taken it easy and relaxed, but they were faithful day in and day out. So many people today are waiting on something, you know, maybe to fulfill them that will finally make them faithful.

You know, maybe they're waiting on a relationship. When I meet that perfect person, he or she will make me faithful. Meanwhile, I'll be unfaithful to all these other relationships. Or it could be a job.

Once they find that perfectly fulfilling job, then they'll be faithful to it. Then they'll work hard at it. But here, the good and faithful servants are good because they are faithful, not because they're fulfilled, okay?

Whatever they were doing, just as they traded with it. It's not as though they just kind of, probably in their day, it's most likely livestock or something like that. And it's not as though, you know, they just this is so fulfilled by buying and selling cattle or goats.

Oh, this just so fulfills me. And so they were fulfilled. And so they went out and were faithful to it. No, they were faithful with what they had been given. And that's what God expects from us. Be faithful with what you are given.

Find your fulfillment in being faithful. Don't expect that you'll finally be faithful when finally you find something to fulfill you. Be fulfilled in faithfulness. Well, two things they did to multiply what was given them.

They were faithful and they worked hard. And God expects us to use our time in advancing somehow everything that we have. Now, when I was younger, I'm kind of undisciplined now, I guess, but when I would ask myself every day, have I advanced today?

I've done something today to advance every part of me. Spiritually, you ask yourself every day, have I advanced today spiritually in prayer, today in Bible study? Have I considered something? I mean, you have to read a whole book, but maybe just meditate on the verses, something in serving God today.

Have I advanced mentally? Have I learned something? Have I stretched my mind? Have I advanced physically? Am I in better shape today than I was the day before? Have I advanced financially? Have I made some money or saved some money today?

Or have I rested and refreshed myself so that I can do those things better tomorrow? The Scottish Puritan David Dixon wrote that the parable showed us that just as the faithful servant, whether his talents are fewer or more, was accepted of his master and made partaker of his joy, so every man who in the discharge of his calling seeks faithfully the glory of Christ and the increase of his kingdom shall be accepted in the day of judgment.

God loves hard work. Work hard in your calling in life. Be excellent like the two good and faithful servants. They took what had been added to them and they multiplied it by hard and smart work, returning to the master twice what had been given to them.

The lesson, as John Piper would say, don't waste your life. Don't waste your life on things that just fritter it away. Invest it. Work on it. Develop it. Make more of it so that at the end of your life that you were the best that you could be at everything you did, whether academics or sports or teaching or business or cooking or music or saving, painting, writing, you know, whatever.

You fill in the blank. Whatever it is that you were given to do, you did it for the glory of God and you did it excellently, faithfully. God adds. We should multiply. But then Christ divides. Well, two servants are praised and told well done and called good and faithful.

The Final Judgment Will Divide the Faithful from the Faithless

There's only one problem with giving high grades. You know what that is? Unless you give them to everybody, then it's great inflation and that's no good, but it divides the good from the bad. Jesus here teaches that there is a final judgment, right?

I'll see even more about that in the next passage, but here there is a final judgment and that judgment will divide the faithful from the faithless. Calling some good and faithful divides them from those who are not good and faithful.

You know, giving A's divides the good students from the bad students. When I was a teaching assistant at the University of Chicago, I gave a few A's, a few, to good and faithful students who had studied and done their work, but by doing that I divided them from others.

And I remember there was one young lady student who came to the professor's office where I was personally to get her grade. She was impatient to see it, I guess, after the test and I had to hand it directly to her.

I graded the test paper in my hand, right into her hand, with an F right on it. She failed. She was a senior. She needed that class to graduate, but her work failed and she started to cry. I felt miserable, but I couldn't change her grade.

She earned it. My grading divided the A's from the F's and caused much weeping. At the end, there is a division and some will be crying. Now, what is it then that divides? What is it about those that fail that causes them to fail?

Now, we've seen that some of the causes to succeed, that is, they're faithful, they work hard. What is it that causes others to fail so that they have to be divided from the rest? Well, there's four things mentioned here.

I can't get them to rhyme or alliterate or anything, but here they are. They're blame-shifting. Two is bearing, three is fear, and four is laziness. In verse 24, last of all, the third servant came forward.

He's returning the one talent he had been given. He begins with an explanation. Really, it's blame-shifting. He basically says, you know, Master, it's your fault. You know, if you weren't so hard, use the word hard there, and exacting, I would have tried harder, not for you.

Blame-shifting is a natural part of being a sinner. Sinners hate to take the blame, to take responsibility, to say, I was wrong. The first thing that Adam said in the garden, anybody remember, after the sin, after he sins, confronted by God, first thing he says, God, the woman you gave me, it's her fault.

And God, it's your fault, he implied, by giving her to me. You did it. It's everybody's fault, except for mine, and that's common. That's the way sinners are. Always somebody else's fault. Blame-shifting is common in abusive relationships.

Common excuse, if you would only stop doing that, I wouldn't get so mad. It's always someone else's fault. And to this last servant, it's the fault of the master for being so demanding. Apparently, because he confesses to himself, you notice that, where he says, you knew that I was hard, expecting crops from fields where I hadn't planted.

This servant, he actually went through the fields where he hadn't planted to see if he could harvest some crops there, wild stuff growing. Can you believe it? He's that hard, he's that demanding. Now, what will he do then, if he comes back and I've lost all my money, and my investments went bad?

So, you know, he just reasons, I might as well bury it. That's the perfectly logical way that he was thinking. A rabbi of this time had said that the only safe place for money was to bury it in the ground, and so he took that advice.

So, seeing the master so demanding, he better not take any chances. He surrenders to just protecting it. I'm going to try to advance it, not to make more of it. Now, some people just try to conserve, as they just try to hold on to what they have in life.

They don't want to go forward. They're afraid that'll mean having to leave things behind. In the little town we lived in, in Pennsylvania, there was this old house that hadn't been lived in for about 40 years.

It was actually a fairly decent looking house, and I looked in the window once, peered in, and I could see, it looked like a scene out of the 1950s. There's old-fashioned kind of furniture, and a big TV, but with a little tiny round screen.

Probably the last thing that had been watched on it was Leave it to Beaver, you know, when it was first coming out. The people that owned the house actually lived nearby, a few houses down, but I was told that they would never sell it.

They wouldn't even bring the old furniture out of it. They just, they grew up there in that house, and so they couldn't bear to let it go. They're just going to let it sit, conserve it. They held on to it, and there are people who treat the gospel, you know, treat the gospel like that.

They'll bury it. They'll try to preserve it. They might fight each other over any perceived change, or, you know, different way of presenting it, but they don't really try to spread it, to make more of it.

After all, if you do that, you know, they're afraid we might lose it. The last servant buries his talents because he's afraid. He says so himself in verse 25, you know, so he says, I was afraid. You're so demanding.

I was afraid. He's afraid of losing the master's money, and thought just preserving it was the right thing to do, but as Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, wrote, winners are not afraid of losing, but losers are.

Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success. A woman in Israel, true story, about three, four years ago, apparently is too afraid of the banks. You never know.

I could tell they could collapse, whatever, literally stuffed all her money, her life savings, in her mattress, but one day, when she was away, her adult daughter, not knowing where her mother put her life savings, thought she would do her mother a great favor, get rid of her old lumpy mattress, and buy her a brand new one, and by the time the mother got back, it was too late.

The trash men had already hauled away the old mattress. They went to the dump. They searched everywhere. They couldn't find it, with nearly one million dollars of a life savings stuffed inside. Well, finally, the master says that the real reason he took the easy way out was he was just lazy, and here we see the definition, or maybe you say the essence, of laziness.

You know, when our fears are greater than our faith, we lose any motivation to work. You know, if you have no faith and something good is going to come out of this, why work? You just say, it's not worth it.