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I love that the audience of this podcast is filled with many of those who consider themselves Christians and many of those who do not. Regardless of where you fall within those two categories, today’s episode is for you. Today we’ll be looking at a story Jesus told in Matthew chapter 25, and the lessons found in that story are ones that all of us can benefit from.
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. This is episode 692, “Burying Your Best.” I’m Darrell Darnell, I have to constantly remind myself not to compare myself with others, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
Yesterday we celebrated Easter and that week of Jesus’ life leading up to the resurrection wasn’t quiet or slow. It was a whirlwind.
Sunday, Jesus rides into Jerusalem and the crowd goes absolutely wild. Monday, he walks into the temple and starts flipping over tables. Thursday, he’s sharing what would become his final meal with the people closest to him. And by Friday, he’s on a cross.
The disciples were with him through all of it. And they had to sense that something was shifting. Something was different. Something big was coming.
So in a quiet moment on the Mount of Olives, they asked him. “What are the signs? How will we know when the end is near?”
And Jesus did what Jesus did. He told them stories.
In Matthew chapter 25, we get three of them back to back. The Parable of the Ten Virgins. The Parable of the Talents. And the Sheep and the Goats. Three stories, one right after another, each one answering that question from a different angle.
Today I want to sit with the one in the middle. The Parable of the Talents.
Before we dig in, a quick note on context. In the ancient world, a talent was a unit of measurement. It was a weight, somewhere between 75 and 100 pounds, used to measure money. And when you do the math on what that would be worth today, Google AI puts a single talent somewhere between $600,000 and $1 million. So when Jesus is talking about a master handing over two talents or five talents to his servants, he’s not talking about pocket change. He’s talking about real, significant, life-altering resources.
Here’s the parable in full:
“For 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 them. 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 also who 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 sown 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.”
It’s a fascinating story. And it raises real questions.
Where do you see yourself in it? Are you the servant who takes what’s been given and immediately gets to work? Or do you see yourself in the third servant, the one who was so afraid of losing what he had that he buried it just to make sure nothing bad could happen?
What do you think about the master’s reaction? Was he too harsh? Was it fair to give the one talent to the servant who already had ten? These are honest questions worth sitting with.
Here’s what I learned.
On the sacred side of this story, the application for believers is hard to miss. Jesus is talking about himself. He is the master going on a journey. We are his servants. And what he has entrusted to us, including our gifts, our resources, our spiritual abilities, aren’t ours to hold onto. They’re his. Left in our care. To be invested. To be grown. To be used in service of enlarging his kingdom while he’s away.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul makes it clear that every believer has been given spiritual gifts. Not some believers. Every believer. And in 1 Peter chapter 4, Peter takes it a step further, telling us that whatever gift we’ve received, we should use it to serve others, as good stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.
We’re not holding our gifts for ourselves. We’re holding them in trust. And one day, the master returns. Accounts will be settled.
What’s sobering about this parable is the fate of the third servant. He called the master hard and unfair, and used that as his justification for doing nothing. But notice what the master said in response. He didn’t argue about his character. He argued about the servant’s logic. Even if everything you believe about me is true, the master said, you still had options. You still could have done something. There was no excuse for nothing.
This parable also carries a quiet but serious warning. There will be people who believe they are part of the family, but where there is no genuine relationship, no real investment, no fruit, the outcome is sobering. “Cast the worthless servant into outer darkness.” That’s not a small line tucked away at the end. That’s a serious word worth taking seriously.
But here’s where this story opens up in a way I find genuinely fascinating, and it’s the piece that applies to believers and non-belivers alike.
The word talent, as we use it today, meaning a natural gift or skill, actually comes from interpretations of this very parable. Theologians and scholars in the late 13th century began reading this story and applying the concept to human ability, not just money. The idea being that just like the servants in the story were given financial resources, God gives each of us natural abilities and gifts, and we are equally responsible for how we invest and develop them.
So when you pour that modern meaning back into the story, it becomes something you can carry into every area of your life, not just Sunday morning.
And that’s where I want to spend the rest of our time.
Because how often do we look at our own gifts, the actual abilities we were born with and the ones we’ve developed over the years, and we bury them? Not necessarily out of laziness, but often out of fear. We look around and compare. He’s twice as talented as I am. She has five times the ability I do. And instead of using that as fuel to grow, we use it as a reason to quit. To hide. To dig a hole and put our gift in the ground.
Let me ask you something.
Have you ever looked at pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the 1970s and 80s? The man was built like a statue. Now compare yourself to him. Are you the same? Of course not. But here’s the thing. You have the exact same muscles he has. Not different muscles. The same ones. What’s different? His are bigger. Because he worked them. He invested in them. He enlarged them over time.
Arnold had a dream to become the greatest bodybuilder in the world, which would lead him to becoming Mr. Olympia. Not a casual interest. A dream. And he went to work. He won the title seven consecutive years and came back five years later to win it an eighth time.
Then he decided he wanted to become a Hollywood actor. Of course, we know how that story ends. But that’s not how it started.
In his very first film role, they didn’t even use his real name. And every single line he spoke was dubbed over by someone else because his Austrian accent was considered too thick for American audiences. He was in the movie, and they erased his voice.
Most people would have buried the talent right there. Most people would have said, I’m not good enough. They don’t even want my voice. I’ll just go back to what I know. But he didn’t. He kept working. He kept investing. He kept growing. Twelve years later, he got his big break with Conan the Barbarian. Two years later, The Terminator came out, and that thick Austrian accent became one of the most iconic voices in movie history. By 1996 he was the highest paid actor in Hollywood.
Here’s what I keep coming back to with this story.
The master in the parable didn’t expect all three servants to end up with the same amount. The servant who started with two didn’t have to match the servant who started with five. He just had to do something with what he had. And when he did, the master’s words were exactly the same. “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Well done. Not “well done, you started with five.” Not “well done, you ended with ten.” Just well done. You were faithful. You invested. You didn’t bury it.
Whether you are approaching this story from a place of faith or simply as a framework for how to live a better life, the challenge is the same. Stop comparing what you have to what someone else has. Stop using the gap between your talent and theirs as an excuse to do nothing.
Start with what you have. Invest it. Work it. Grow it. The master isn’t asking you to start with five when you were only given two. He’s asking you to do something with the two.
The question isn’t how much do you have. The question is what are you doing with it?
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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