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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Anthony Baca

Good and Faithful Servant

Our Father in Heaven, we thank you for the blessing and the privilege to come and to learn from you.

We ask that the Holy Spirit would be here to teach and the guide because your word promises that that's exactly what he would do.

That he would lead and guide us into all truth.

And so Lord, open our eyes that we may behold wondrous things out of your book today.

Keep our minds from the distractions of the enemy.

He invents every possible device to engross the mind, And we pray for divine shielding at this time.

Shield our minds and bless us, Lord, and teach us.

Today's presentation is entitled, Good and Faithful Servant.

And if you recognize that phrase, that saying, it's actually coming from the parable of the talents.

The specific verse that I drew it from is Matthew chapter 25, looking in verse 21.

Matthew chapter 25, beginning in verse 21.

The Bible says, Well done, good and faithful servants.

I think that those are some of the most precious words that will ever fall on a mortal's ears.

How many of you want to hear those words spoken to you?

The voice, the tender words of Jesus saying, well done good and faithful servant.

You were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.

The Bible doesn't say it twice, but I put it twice on accident.

Enter into the joy of the Lord." I'll put that twice.

When I look at this text, When I look at this Bible verse, like many verses that are similar to it, certain verses just stick out to me.

When I see Jesus telling someone, Good job, enter in, you've made it.

It makes me wonder what led up to this verse.

What experience led up to Christ saying, good job, you've been faithful, you've made it.

Because I don't know about you, but I want to be there on that day to hear those words.

And the Bible is so precious because God doesn't just say that and say, guess what got him there.

We can simply back up, study the passage, and know for ourselves, according to the Bible, what is a good and faithful servant.

So today we're going to be studying the parable of the 10 talents.

And I know that many of you have probably studied the parable 20 times or a hundred times even but 1st Corinthians 8 verse 2 is a beautiful verse to keep in mind.

The Bible says if any man thinketh he knoweth anything he knoweth it not as he ought to know it.

So I'm going to suggest that even if you heard the parable a hundred times, none of us know the Bible as we ought to and God still has a blessing stored for you today.

We're gonna look at the greater context of the parable before we dive in.

1 of my favorite classes to teach at Souls West is how to study the Bible.

To me there is nothing more exciting, nothing more precious, nothing more amazing than teaching someone to study the Bible for themselves.

And then to have them come to you and to share with you what God has spoken to them directly.

In fact, I can go on a tangent on that, but I'm going to refrain myself and stick on where I'm supposed to be.

And so context is a very important concept to keep in mind when you're studying the Bible.

The parable of the 10 talents, when I converted in 2007 from atheism to Christianity, and as I studied the Bible, and I studied it for the first time, I thought it was a cute parable.

I was like, God gives talents and I continued my studies and I moved on from there.

When I went back to restudy this parable, I realized I missed the bigger picture.

You see, Matthew 25 verse 14, commonly cited as the first verse of the parable, says, "...for the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them." Now, if you have a King James or a New King James Bible, what you notice is unusual about the word, the kingdom of heaven is, those words, that phrase.

When you see words that are in italics in the King James and the New King James Bibles.

It means that those words are not in the original manuscripts.

If you've actually read a literal translation of the Bible, like Young's literal translation, you be thankful for supplied words.

It's a little bit rough to read and they use the context to supply these words.

It's no ill intention by any means but it is good to note and to recognize that you don't throw all your weight on an italicized word.

Here we see, for the kingdom of heaven is like.

That phrase does not exist in the original manuscript.

In fact, the English Standard Version renders it more accurately by saying, for it will be like a man going on a journey.

Because there is no description of the noun or the thing that is being described in the verse.

It just says for, it literally translates for like a man.

So the most accurate translation would be for it.

For it will be like a man going on a journey.

I'm going to suggest to you that verse 14 is not the first verse of the parable.

I'm going to suggest that verse 13 is the first verse of the parable.

The Bible says in verse 13 of Matthew chapter 25, watch therefore for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming for it is like.

In other words, the parable of the 10 talents isn't just a nice parable.

The parable of the 10 talents is a description of the experience at the end of time that God's people need to have to be ready to see Jesus come again in the clouds.

That parable, that is what is being described.

It is the second coming of Christ that is being described.

In fact, I took some pictures for you and I want you to look at the screen here.

And the question is, what do you notice about these chapters from Matthew 24 all the way to Matthew 25?

That's a screenshot of my Bible software.

Matthew 24, take heed that no 1 deceives you, and Jesus begins speaking all the way to verse 25.

If you look, it continues from verse 26 all the way to verse 46.

It continues on all the way to Matthew 25.

Do you notice anything unusual about this passage?

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Good and Faithful Servant

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