Grantsdale Community Church
2026-09-06-The Terror of Buried Talents
  • Introduction
    Last week I told you the job can't be faked at the door, and I promised that we'd stay on the Mount of Olives with the same Master and a different set of servants. Well, here we are, and this time Jesus doesn't hand out a job description. He hands out cash.
    I’m going to make a confession before we start. When I was a kid, I buried money in an old Prince Albert pipe tobacco can. It was four dollars in quarters, a couple of store bought arrowheads I was sure were valuable, and a note to my future self.
    I have never located it, because I forgot exactly where I buried it. Somewhere on an old property my parents were renting, there may still be a can of my life savings, guarded by nothing but time and my own poor map making ability.
    I thought I was being careful. Turns out I was just being the third servant in this parable, decades early, and with a significantly smaller inheritance.
    If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Matthew 25:14 through 30 today. Jesus isn’t interested in patting anyone on the head this morning. He's interested in what we do with what He gives us, and He's going to make that point in a way that should genuinely unsettle at least some of us, before we leave.

    A Master Who Trusts Unevenly, On Purpose

    Let's read how it opens.
    Matthew 25:14–15 CSB
    14 “For it is just like a man about to go on a journey. He called his own servants and entrusted his possessions to them. 15 To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent, depending on each one’s ability. Then he went on a journey.
    A talent wasn't loose change. It was somewhere around sixteen years of an ordinary laborer's wages. All wrapped up in a single word that, in English, has come to mean something else entirely.
    That’s either a happy accident of translation or a very patient joke God has been telling for two thousand years. Either way, even the servant who received one talent didn't walk away with pocket change. He walked away with a small fortune.
    Notice the Master doesn't hand out equal shares and call it fair. Five, two, one, “depending on each one’s ability.” That line trips people up every time, because we live in a culture that has decided unequal is automatically unjust.
    But an uneven distribution isn't the same thing as an unloving one. Paul says almost the identical thing about spiritual gifts, and he doesn't apologize for it either.
    Romans 12:6 CSB
    6 According to the grace given to us, we have different gifts: If prophecy, use it according to the proportion of one’s faith;
    Different. Not deficient. If I handed three of my kids an identical toolbox, one of them would build a birdhouse, one of them would organize the toolbox by handle length, and one of them would use the hammer to test the durability of the coffee table. Same tools, wildly different outcomes, and none of that has to do with the toolbox.
    The Master in this parable knows exactly what each servant can carry, and He hands out exactly that much, not more, not less. That's not favoritism. That's a Master who has done His homework on us better than we've done it on ourselves.
    I've sat across from plenty of folks over the years who compare their two talents to somebody else's five and quietly conclude the whole exercise isn't worth the effort. I've done it myself.
    Usually while scrolling through the accomplishments of somebody else's Tuesday. But notice the servant with two talents never once asks the Master why he didn't get five. He's too busy putting his two to work to bother filing a complaint about the math.

    Two Servants Who Understood the Assignment

    Two of the three servants go straight to work.
    Matthew 25:15–17 CSB
    15 Immediately 16 the man who had received five talents went, put them to work, and earned five more. 17 In the same way the man with two earned two more.
    I love how fast this happens in the text. No hand-wringing. No committee meeting about market conditions. No four-week sermon series on discerning God's will for their talents. They immediately went and put the talents to work.
    Paul tells the Corinthians almost the same thing, minus the money and plus a promise.
    1 Corinthians 15:58 CSB
    58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
    Not in vain. Not wasted breath. Whatever we’re doing with what God gives us this week, if we’re doing it for Him, none of it evaporates, even the parts that feel like we’re just showing up and shoveling.
    And most of what faithfulness actually looks like, on any given Tuesday, is exactly that. Showing up. Shoveling. Again tomorrow. Solomon said something similar, with considerably less patience for excuses.
    Ecclesiastes 11:6 CSB
    6 In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hand rest, because you don’t know which will succeed, whether one or the other, or if both of them will be equally good.
    You see, Solomon isn't asking us to guarantee the harvest. He's asking us to plant the seed, morning and evening both, and leave the guaranteeing to somebody with a much better view of the field than we've got.

    The Servant Who Buried the Evidence

    Then there's servant number three, and here's where the story stops being pleasant.
    Matthew 25:18 CSB
    18 But the man who had received one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money.
    He didn't lose it. He didn't gamble it away in some first-century version of a ponsy scheme. And he didn’t forget where he buried it. His map making apparently far superior to mine.
    And he safely preserved the one talent perfectly.
    If the Master had simply wanted his money kept safe and untouched, this servant should have earned a bonus. Instead, when the Master finally comes home and settles accounts, listen to how this servant explains himself.
    Matthew 25:24–25 CSB
    24 “The man who had received one talent also approached and said, ‘Master, I know you. You’re a harsh man, reaping where you haven’t sown and gathering where you haven’t scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went off and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’
    “I know you. You’re a harsh man,” That's the hinge the whole story swings on, same as “my master is delayed” was the hinge last week.
    Two different servants, two different sentences whispered to themselves in private, and both sentences turn out to be catastrophically wrong about who the Master actually is.
    This servant didn't fail because he was lazy in the ordinary sense. Digging a hole is work. He failed because he believed a lie about the character of the One who trusted him, and that lie did all the damage from there.
    He thought he was protecting himself from a harsh master. He was actually hiding from the very Master who'd handed him a fortune and called him a servant, not a slave, not a stranger, not a suspect, a servant.
    John understood exactly how that kind of fear operates, and he wasn't gentle about naming its source.
    1 John 4:18 CSB
    18 There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love.
    Fear of the wrong kind doesn't protect us from God. It just convinces us to bury the very thing He gave us to use for Him. Paul says almost the identical thing to a young pastor named Timothy, who apparently had buried his own gift under a rock labeled “I'm too young for this.”
    2 Timothy 1:6–7 CSB
    6 Therefore, I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is in you through the laying on of my hands. 7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.
    Rekindle the gift. Not keep buried. Not keep safely wrapped in a drawer where nobody, including you, ever has to look at it again. That means at some point Timothy had buried his gift instead of using it.
    I've met people, and honestly I've been that person on certain mornings, who treat their own gifts the way I treated that Prince Albert can. Convinced it's safer underground than in play, and so certain of its exact location that they never actually go back and check.

    What the Master Actually Celebrates

    Now look at what happens to the two servants who went and worked, because I think we skipped past this part way too quickly.
    Matthew 25:21 CSB
    21 “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.’
    Same sentence Jesus used a chapter earlier for the servant found doing his job at the door. Faithful. Not flawless. Not five-for-five with no margin of error.
    The servant with two talents gets the exact same sentence as the servant with five, word for word. And that detail alone should put to rest any fear that God is grading us on a curve set by somebody else's talent count.
    He's not asking whether we out-produced the person in the next pew. He's asking whether we did something with what He gave us, and then He's handing out more of the same.
    Which if you were listening two weeks ago should sound familiar. More responsibility. More trust. More opportunity to be faithful, which turns out to be a fair description of the reward every time this Master hands one out.
    There's an odd little parallel story Jesus tells on another occasion, in Luke, using coins called minas instead of talents, and He ends it with a line that ought to stop us cold.
    Luke 19:26 CSB
    26 “ ‘I tell you, that to everyone who has, more will be given; and from the one who does not have, even what he does have will be taken away.
    That's not a tax bracket. That's how faithfulness compounds and how fear compounds, both in the same direction they were already leaning.

    The Cost of Playing It Safe

    So here's what happens to our buried-talent, and I'm not going to soften it, because Jesus doesn't.
    Matthew 25:28–30 CSB
    28 “ ‘So take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have more than enough. But from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 30 And throw this good-for-nothing servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
    Weeping and gnashing of teeth, the exact phrase Jesus used for the wicked servant we met last week, standing at the same kind of door with the same kind of excuse dressed differently.
    Neither man stole anything. Neither man ran off with the goods. One got distracted by presumption, convinced the Master was delayed and therefore irrelevant.
    The other got paralyzed by fear, convinced the Master was harsh and therefore untrustworthy. Two entirely different roads that end up in the exact same place.
    The writer of Hebrews, watching a congregation tempted to quietly fold up their confidence and put it somewhere safe, tells them exactly what not to do with it.
    Hebrews 10:35–36 CSB
    35 So don’t throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you need endurance, so that after you have done God’s will, you may receive what was promised.
    Don't throw it away. Don't bury it either. A confidence buried in the ground is, functionally, a confidence thrown away, just with better landscaping and considerably more dirt under your fingernails.
    The reason I titled this sermon “the terror of buried talents,” and not merely “the tragedy of buried talents,” is that terror is closer to what's actually happening in that servant's chest.
    Fear got there first, made itself a home, and then dressed itself up as caution so it could stay a while longer without anyone noticing what it actually was.
    James doesn't leave us much room to call this an innocent mistake, either. He names exactly what inaction like this actually is, in language a lot more direct than most of us are comfortable with.
    James 4:17 CSB
    17 So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it.
    That verse has a way of ruining the excuse before we even finish forming it. The one-talent servant didn't do anything cruel.
    He didn't do anything, period, and James says that's precisely the problem. Knowing the good and burying it anyway isn't neutral. It has a name, and the name isn't caution, it’s sin.
    Conclusion
    For two weeks now we've watched the Master hand people a job, and a fortune, and then leave. There’s a servant who forgets he's still on the clock.
    And a servant who's so afraid of losing what he was given that he never risks using it. Neither one is a villain twirling a mustache. Both of them are ordinary people who told themselves a story about God that wasn't true, and then built their whole life on top of it.
    Here's the question this parable actually wants sitting in our lap on the drive home. Not “how many talents did I get,” because comparing our two to somebody else's five was never the assignment.
    The question is simpler, and honestly, a little more uncomfortable: “What have I buried out of fear that God actually meant for me to use?”
    Maybe it's a gift for teaching that's been quietly rusting because w’eve decided we’re not qualified.
    Maybe it's a marriage we’ve stopped investing in because it feels safer not to try than to try again and fail again.
    Maybe it's an apology, a phone call, or a small act of generosity we’ve buried under a very reasonable-sounding excuse for years.
    Whatever it is, I want you to hear this the way the servant with two talents heard it, not the way the servant with one talent imagined it.
    The Master isn't circling the block waiting to catch us falling short. He's the One who trusted us with the thing in the first place, and He would rather see us risk it in His name than protect it in our fear.
    Next week we stay right here on the Mount of Olives, for the last stop before Jesus leaves this hillside for good. He's going to describe a King separating sheep from goats.
    The only thing that seems to matter on judgment day is what everybody noticed, and what they did about it. We're calling it “Sheep, Goats, and What We Noticed.”
    Until then, go dig something up. That Prince Albert can isn't doing anybody any good in the ground, and neither is whatever you’ve been burying.

      • Matthew 25:14–15ESV

      • Romans 12:6ESV

      • Matthew 25:15–17ESV

      • 1 Corinthians 15:58ESV

      • Ecclesiastes 11:6ESV

      • Matthew 25:18ESV

      • Matthew 25:24–25ESV

      • 1 John 4:18ESV

      • 2 Timothy 1:6–7ESV

      • Matthew 25:21ESV

      • Luke 19:26ESV

      • Matthew 25:28–30ESV

      • Hebrews 10:35–36ESV

      • James 4:17ESV

Grantsdale Community Church
bklapwyk@grantsdaleccmt.org
4063666883
https://grantsdaleccmt.org/
2 members