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Great Expectations'
All of God’s Children were & are created with Great Expectations! God created us all with gifts of talent which He expects us to use to create improvements in this Beautiful World that He created and gave to all His Children to live in!
Jesus Christ knowest His Heavenly Father also wants us to believe & have Great Expectations for ourselves!
In His parable of the talents, Jesus told us of a master who, before embarking on a long journey, entrusted his money into the hands of three servants. The master expected the servants to increase what he had given them. However, Matthew 25:19-23 tells us that when this master returned, he found that only the first two servants had increased what He had entrusted to them.
In verse 21, the Bible tells us the master returned and discovered that the first servant doubled his investment. When the master saw this increase, he said, “…Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” In verse 23, the master was similarly thrilled when he found out the second servant had doubled his investment as well: “His lord said unto him, well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”
But why did the master call their success a “few things”? Their accomplishment wasn’t small. In fact, it was huge. Yet the master said to the first two servants, “…Thou hast been faithful over a few things….” His words “over a few things” seem to show that what they had done wasn’t such a big deal after all. I’m sure the servants were dumbfounded. What did their master mean? Was he belittling what they had done?
What the first two servants achieved was fantastic, but it was just the beginning. They had proven themselves to be hardworking and capable. They had proven responsibility. The master now knew they could be trusted with true riches. Because these two stewards had proven themselves faithful, the master saw a bright future ahead for them. As is always true with God, faithfulness resulted in promotion and greater responsibilities. The first two stewards had passed a test on a lower level. Now their master was satisfied to thrust them upward into even more monumental life assignments.
But when the master came to the third servant and saw that he had done nothing with the money given to him, he told the servant, “Thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury” (vv. 26,27).
It is obvious that this third servant was not ignorant of the master’s expectation. He knew that the master expected increase from him. In fact, he told them, “Thou knewest.” This means the third servant couldn’t pretend to be ignorant. He knew that the master expected him to do something significant with what had been entrusted to him.
This master would accept no excuses for a lack of increase. It didn’t matter how difficult the situation, how many odds were against his servants, or how impossible it seemed, the master still expected increase. His servants understood that this was his expectation. Thus, the servant who did nothing with his talent found himself in a horrible predicament.
His master called him, “Thou wicked and slothful servant” (Matthew 25:26). As if this isn’t bad enough, in Matthew 25:30 his master called him “the unprofitable servant.” Before we go any further, we should stop and examine these words, for they vividly express Jesus’ personal sentiment toward people who have enormous potential but never develop it due to laziness.
Let’s look first at Matthew 25:26, where Jesus calls the non-productive servant “thou wicked and slothful servant.” The words “wicked and slothful” are taken from the single Greek word okneros. This word means lazy or idle. It carries the idea of a person who has a do-nothing, lethargic, lackadaisical, apathetic, indifferent, lukewarm attitude toward life.