Kent Hughes says, “We may be horrified by the fierceness of this passage, but beneath the terrifying imagery is a solemn fact: Jesus, coming into the world, forces every person to decide – and the decision is a matter of life and death.” The investment of the gospel is a matter of life and death.
According to Hughes, Luke teaches us here that “The noble Son came, and before he went away to acquire his kingship two things happened. First, he gave a gospel deposit to every one of his followers. And second, his enemies attempted to deny his kingship. But through his death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification he substantiated his eternal position as King of kings and Lord of lords. And he will someday return. To those who have invested his investment, there will be unthought-of rewards. To those who have hidden it, shame. To those who reject him, death. We are at the final hour. The King is coming.” The only question left is… are we investing in the gospel… are we hiding the gospel or are we rejecting the gospel? This passage is all about the king. King Jesus. It’s all about how King Jesus comes & deals with false expectations. It’s all about how he makes an investment with the gospel. It’s all about how he makes enemies. It’s all about how he returns & issues rewards to the faithful & the unfaithful. It’s all about how he issues judgment on his enemies. It’s all about King Jesus because God wants us to have a clear and trustworthy picture of who King Jesus is and what he does so that we can be faithful investors of the gospel.
Look at Luke 19:11 – 27…
11 As they heard these things, he proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. 12 He said therefore, “A nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return. 13 Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas, and said to them, ‘Engage in business until I come.’ 14 But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’ 15 When he returned, having received the kingdom, he ordered these servants to whom he had given the money to be called to him, that he might know what they had gained by doing business. 16 The first came before him, saying, ‘Lord, your mina has made ten minas more.’ 17 And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.’ 18 And the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your mina has made five minas.’ 19 And he said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’ 20 Then another came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your mina, which I kept laid away in a handkerchief; 21 for I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man. You take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.’ 22 He said to him, ‘I will condemn you with your own words, you wicked servant! You knew that I was a severe man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? 23 Why then did you not put my money in the bank, and at my coming I might have collected it with interest?’ 24 And he said to those who stood by, ‘Take the mina from him, and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’ 25 And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten minas!’ 26 ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 27 But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.’”
Notice How The King Handles False Expectations… (11)
Luke tells us that, “As they heard these things, he proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.” So the way that Jesus deals with false expectations is he tells stories to help us understand the truth and to be set free from our false expectations. Jesus doesn’t want us to believe lies about him or about the kingdom that he is establishing because to believe lies is to live in bondage and Jesus came to seek and to save the lost and to set the captives free from their chains.
In this passage we learn that some people have given into believing false expectations about Jesus and his kingdom. They are expecting King Jesus to establish his kingdom right now. As the people in our passage experienced the miraculous work of Jesus over the last few verses they’ve witnessed & heard some very powerful things. A wealthy man who thinks he’s religious enough to get into Heaven actually walks away from Jesus frustrated with the cost of being a disciple. Jesus tells his disciples that if they suffer by losing relationships and material possessions because of their commitment to Christ then they can trust that their sacrifice will produce eternal rewards. A poor blind man comes to see Jesus and he’s miraculously healed and he begins to follow Jesus as a result. A wealthy gangster comes to see Jesus only to find that Jesus came to save him. These are miraculous things happening all around Jesus as he makes his way to Jerusalem so that he can die horribly on a cross.
If we put ourselves in these people’s shoes we might find that it’s only natural to begin to believe that what we see right in front of us is all there is to the kingdom of God. In other words… It’s easy sometimes to falsely expect Jesus to do something right now that in truth he will do in the future. But Jesus doesn’t want us to give into false expectations because God’s timing isn’t the same as our timing. God’s plans are beyond our complete understanding. This is the essence of what it means to truly trust in Jesus as our King by laying our false expectations & our control issues at the foot of his cross. The cross of Christ is the greatest investment ever made and that investment is bound to not only make followers of Christ but to also make enemies of Christ.
Notice How The King Comes & Makes A Deposit & Then Makes Some Enemies… (12-14)
Luke tells us that Jesus begins his parable (a story meant to convey principles of truth) by telling us about “A nobleman who went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return.” And before this nobleman leaves to get the keys to his kingdom he calls “ten of his servants, (and) he gave them ten minas, and said to them, ‘Engage in business until I come.’ But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’” The truth of this story that Jesus is telling is the truth that he came to begin the establishment of his Kingdom through his life & ministry & death & resurrection & ascension & imminent return in glory.
This story that Jesus is telling was told against the backdrop of an evil Jewish king named King Herod who had recently died and left his kingdom to his son who was a ruthless & violent ruler who had murdered nearly 3,000 Jews and stacked up their dead bodies in the temple of worship. Isn’t it amazing to think about how this political story from thousands of years ago relates to some of our current political landscape with all of it’s hype and all of it’s fear and all of it’s evil?
This ruthless king ruled his people through fear and violence and the people who were listening to Jesus hated this king but Jesus wanted them to know that he is a different kind of king. He’s a king who invests infinitely in his people like the king in the story he told. That king invested a single mina in ten different people. He invested the same amount in every person and the amount he invested was quite large because a mina was equivalent to 3 months of working wages. This king is a different kind of king for certain. He’s not a king who rules through fear… he’s not a king who rules through manipulation… He’s not a king who rules through extortion… He’s not a king who rules like a tyrant. Jesus is the King of kings because he is a different kind of king. He’s more than any of us could ever hope for. He’s a servant king… he’s a loving king… he’s a merciful king… he’s a gracious king… he’s a just king… he’s a suffering king.
Jesus came and made a deposit of the gospel through the cross and the empty tomb so that all who believe in the message of the gospel could be saved from the penalty and the power of sin and therefore become disciples who wisely invest the gospel in others so that there may be a harvest of righteousness in the souls of others who become saved and set free and adopted into the family of the church by the message of the cross. But as Jesus made this investment of the gospel he also made some enemies. Those enemies were responsible for his death at the cross. Those enemies were you and I. The hands that beat Jesus with whips, and crushed a crown of thorns on his head, and beat him with rods, and threw him on the ground, and nailed his hands and feet to a wooden instrument of torture, and lifted him into the air naked and bloody… those hands that did those horrific things were our hands as we lived as his enemies, dead in our sin, while he went to the cross to invest the greatest investment ever made in us. This kind of investment is certain to carry the promise of rewards.
Notice How The King Rewards Those Who Have Been Faithful… (15-19)
Jesus continues his story about the king who made a huge investment in some people before leaving to secure his kingdom and he tells us that when he returned he called his servants to check on how well they’d done at re-investing the investment he made in them. Jesus says that one person came and said, “’Lord, your mina has made ten minas more.’” To this person, the king said “’Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.’” And another person came and said, “’Lord, your mina has made five minas.’” To this person, the king said, “’you are to be over five cities.’” The picture we get here is that when King Jesus returns he will give rewards to people who’ve not only received the investment of the gospel from him but have also re-invested the gospel in others and because of their re-investment have produced more gospel fruit.
Faithfulness & reward is a tricky subject because the reality of true faithfulness has everything to do with what motivates us. The picture I get from this portion of Scripture is a picture of stewardship. It’s a picture of understanding where what we have actually came from in the first place. These servants were simply that… Servants of the King and when they came to the king they didn’t say “Look at all my hard work” or “Look at what I did” or “Look at how what I invested returned this much profit margin” or “Look at how much more I’m investing than everyone else is investing”. Instead, they saw themselves as servants of the King who were called to steward what belonged to the King rightfully and had been invested in them truthfully. They said, “Lord, your mina has made more minas.” They didn’t take the credit for the growth but instead recognized that the power for the growth was in the true owner of the mina and in the mina itself.
The gospel that King Jesus invests in each of us is powerful in itself for growth in holiness and righteousness because the power of the gospel originates in the power of the owner of that gospel. Our job is to be faithful with the gospel that has been invested in each of us. Some of the common ways that we become unfaithful with the gospel is when we begin to think that the gospel is all about us rather then all about the King who brings us the gospel. We become unfaithful with the gospel when we give into sin whether that be something as seemingly small as discontentment & grumbling to something as seemingly large as gossip, slander or sexual sin. What the King calls us to is faithfulness with the gospel that he has invested in us and to those who are faithful with this investment, great reward is in store. But to those who have been unfaithful with the investment of the gospel by hiding the gospel in their own little personal closet of conservative & self-protective culture, shame becomes their reward.
Notice How The King Rewards Those Who Have Been Unfaithful… (20-26)
Jesus tells us that another person comes to the king and says, “Lord, here is your mina, which I kept laid away in a handkerchief; for I was afraid of you because you are a severe man. You take what you did not deposit, and you reap what you did not sow.” Notice the lie that this person believes about his King. The King has made a huge investment and has returned to see what his investment has reaped but this person has a deceived picture of the king and so he lives in fear because of the lies he’s believed.
So Jesus tells us that the king rewards this unfaithful person with shame when he says, “I will condemn you with your own words, you wicked servant! You knew that I was a severe man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow?” Notice the sarcasm in that question and the mind – blowing truth of the following question when the king says, “Why did you not put my money in the bank, and at my coming I might have collected it with interest?” In other words… The king is like… “If you really believed this about me then why didn’t you give what I have invested in you to someone else who would re-invest it for a return? Your wickedness is obvious!” Can you imagine what that moment must be like? To realize that even though you thought you were doing the right thing by conserving what you had, you in fact were being unfaithful and even wicked because of your attempt to not just preserve what had been invested in you but to preserve yourself? How much time & effort do you spend trying to preserve what you have or trying to preserve yourself all because of fear that is rooted in deception?
The king’s response to this person’s unfaithfulness was to reward him with shame by taking away what he had invested in him and giving it to someone else that had been found faithful with the investment. And some people are absolutely shocked by this and in verse 25 they say to the king, “Lord, he has ten minas!” to which the king says “I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” In other words the reward for unfaithfulness is that we lose what was invested in us. Does that mean we lose our salvation? No I don’t think so. I just think that when we’ve been unfaithful with the gospel that has been planted within us we lose the ability to invest the gospel in others and we lose the ability to reap the benefits or rewards of seeing it take root in others and I think we lose the benefit or reward of responsibility in Heaven. It’s as though this person sees the gospel as fire insurance only rather than a priceless gift to be invested in others so they are rewarded in proportion to their level of investment. Now imagine the person who doesn’t receive the investment of the gospel at all and in fact continues to live as an enemy of the king. The kind of reward this person receives is terrifying because the reward this person receives is judgment.
Notice How The King Issues Judgment On His Enemies… (27)
Jesus says, “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.” Are you kidding!! Slaughter them right in front of me??!! Can you imagine the backroom chatter after Jesus says this? Can you imagine the Facebook posts and the Tweets? Can you imagine the gossip that took place among people as they sat down for dinner as a family after this episode? Can you believe that Jesus said that when the king returns he is going to slaughter his enemies? This is a hard saying. It’s an eye opener. It’s terrifying. But it’s the truth! It’s the truth because when Jesus returns he is returning to judge the living and the dead in accordance with what they did with the gospel.
Think with me for a minute… If you or I reject Christ’s rule and reign over us as the loving and gracious and truthful and merciful and generous king that he is… then what is left for him to do? Isn’t God a just God too? Isn’t God’s judgment & wrath just the outflow of his justice for people who are his enemies? I don’t know about you but I don’t want to be slaughtered. I don’t want to be separated from the God who loves me and generously offered his investment of the gospel of the cross of Christ to me. I don’t want to be the guy who has rejected God’s love. I don’t want to be the guy who became the object of God’s judgment and wrath. I want to be the guy who received God’s investment of the gospel as the object of his love and then turned around and gave everything I possibly could to re-invest the gospel in others so that when the kingdom of God is completely established, I am a part of that kingdom as a son of God who is loved by God!