In this episode, we delve into the captivating topic of the end of the world as discussed in the Olivet Prophecy. Ronald L. Dart provides an engaging analysis of Matthew chapters 24 and 25, bringing to light not just the events surrounding the end times, but the profound lessons on readiness and responsibility that Jesus emphasized. Through the poignant parables of the ten virgins and the talents, listeners are invited to reflect on their own preparedness and the use of their God-given abilities. The episode illustrates the importance of understanding our unique capabilities and the divine expectations placed upon
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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Everyone wants to know about the end of the world. I bring up the subject and everybody’s ears perk up. With the turn of the century looking at us, no, no, the turn of the millennium looking at us, the question is being asked all the more often. Now, when Jesus’ disciples asked him about the end of the world, he gave them a fairly detailed answer. The answer is found in chapters 24 and 25 of the book of Matthew. The answer can be summarized in two short statements. One, it’s not for you to know the time of my return. And two, whatever the time of my return is, you had better be ready. Now, the details of all this that he gave them that can be summarized this way are found in Matthew 24 and 25, and it’s called the Olivet Prophecy because it was delivered on the Mount of Olives. It’s odd, but a lot of people seem to assume when they read through this passage that the answer to the disciples’ questions was basically chapter 24 and that Matthew 24 is the Olivet Prophecy. Well, they’re wrong. In chapter 24, Jesus gave the disciples an overview of end time events. And then he told them that they have to be ready all the time because no man will know the hour or the day of his return. Well, then comes the natural question. What do you mean be ready all the time? What constitutes being ready? How on earth does one get ready? Well, chapter 25 of Matthew, which is still a part of the Olivet Prophecy, deals with this question in three parts. He does it with three parables. And as it happens, they are kingdom parables. Well, the kingdom of heaven is like… Now, the first of these is the parable of the ten virgins. And it just simply warns of the consequences of unpreparedness. In other words, five of the virgins were wise and they were ready. Five of them were foolish and they were not ready. They did not take advantage of the time they had to get themselves prepared. And those who were not ready, well, they got shut out. Now, the second parable takes a different tack. And it begins in Matthew 25, verse 14. Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling into a far country who called his servants to them and delivered to them his goods. To one he gave five talents. To another he gave two. To another one. To every man according to his several ability. And straightway he went away. Okay, the image is fairly clear. You’ve got a fairly prosperous man. He’s got stewards or servants that work for him. He divides up responsibilities. He takes a look at these three guys and he says, well, you know, one guy here is a lot more capable fellow. He can handle five. This fellow over here, he’s a little more limited in ability, but he’s a loyal guy. He can handle two. And the third fellow, he thought, well, I really don’t want to overburden this guy for whatever reason. And he gave him one. The parable, I think, reveals to us it’s important for us to know that we are not all the same in God’s sight. He doesn’t look at us as though we’re a bunch of yellow pencils in a box. Every one of us is unique in our own way, and we have tremendously varying abilities and capabilities and even energy levels. God recognizes the differences, and he passes out responsibilities that fit a person’s ability. He comes down to this earth, and he gives you a job to do. It will fit your capabilities. It will fit your aptitudes. Now, God is nothing if he is not fair. He does not expect everyone to produce exactly the same results or to manage the same degree of complexity. So he continues the parable by saying this. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same and he made beside them five more. Likewise, he that had received two, he gained other two. But he that had received one went and dug a hole in the ground and hid his Lord’s money. I guess that’s what he thought of as security. Now, in a way, the first two of these men produced equal results, even though the absolute results were different by a factor of 10 to 4 or 5 to 2, depending on how you look at it. In other words, one of them produced 5, the other produced 2. But their results are considered equal because both of them doubled the investment God had made in them. Follow that? Now, the third fellow, being security-minded as he was, took no chances. At least he thought so. He was taking no chances. He dug a hole in the ground. He buried the talent. When his Lord came back, well, here’s what happened. After a long time, how long? I don’t know, but he says a long time, so I have to presume a few years. The Lord of these servants comes and reckons with them, and he that had received five talents came and brought another five talents, saying, You delivered me five talents. I have gained beside them five talents more. Here, my Lord, is ten talents.” His Lord said to him, Well done, you good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord. Now, one of the fascinating little by things, by plays of this prophecy is the fact that what is at stake here is God gives a man responsibility to determine if he is able to handle greater responsibility. Preparation, work, readiness all seem to pay off by passing on a heavier responsibility. The implication of this is that in the kingdom of heaven, there are degrees of responsibility there. Now, how does that match your image of heaven? How does that shape up alongside of what you thought or you have heard that heaven is going to be like? The idea many people would have is that, well, we’re going to dine on milk and honey, walk on streets of gold, we’re going to sit and look up into the Master’s face, we will sing songs, play harps, and so forth. But this suggests something rather different. This suggests responsibility. Responsibility for what? Well, it doesn’t say quite right here, only that it’s there. Then came the fellow with the two talents, and he said, Lord, you delivered to me two talents. Look here. I have gained two other talents beside them. His Lord said, Well done, you good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things. I will make you a ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord. Now, as far as I can tell in reading this, there is no apparent distinction in the reward these two receive, even though the absolute results differ widely. Both of them enter into the joy of their Lord. Both of them are given additional responsibility. The fact is, both of them produced equal results. They doubled. They were faithful. But what about the wimp? Yeah, I’ll call him a wimp. He was afraid. He went and hid God’s money in the earth. What about the fellow who took no chances? Well, then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew you, that you’re a hard man. reaping where you have not sown, gathering where you had not strawed. And I was afraid. And I went and hid your talent in the earth, and there you have what is yours. So this poor guy confesses that what had motivated him was fear. Well, okay, how did fear work for him? His Lord answered and said to him, You wicked and slothful servant. Oh, my. You know, this is a pretty harsh condemnation for a man who was just playing it safe, don’t you think? He calls him wicked, says he was lazy. Well, he went on to say, You wicked and slothful servant, you knew. It isn’t as though you didn’t know. You knew that I reap where I didn’t sow and gathered where I have not strode. You ought therefore to have put my money to the exchangers. Then at my coming I should have received my own with interest. Now right here is one of the great lessons of life. And it’s a lesson that this poor guy had never grasped, had never understood. And he was afraid to take any kind of chances. It is illustrated here, and this is only an illustration. It’s not the primary point of it all. But it’s illustrated by the time value of money. I was amazed once. I was going through this parable and trying to explain it to a group of students. And I asked them a simple question. I said, how many of you would rather have $100 today or how many of you would rather have $100 a year from now? Now, I fully expected every student in the class would have said, oh, yeah, I’d rather have the $100 today rather than a year from now. But there was a significant number of the students in that class that said, no, they would take the $100 a year from now. And it took me a long time trying to figure out, well, what is it that would make these fellows and girls think this way? I’m going to tell you my conclusion when I come back.
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There is danger out there. There are pitfalls everywhere. So what do you do? Stay indoors and play it safe or stick your neck out and take a chance. Write for a free CD titled Stick Your Neck Out. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791 or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44 and tell us the call letters of this station.
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So I asked my students, I said, would you rather have $100 today or would you rather have $100 a year from today? And a small group of them wanted it a year from today. And it really had kind of turned out that the reason they did is because they were afraid if they took it now, they wouldn’t have it a year from now. It’d be gone. They’d lose it. Whereas if they got it a year from now, they’d be sure they would have it a year from now. Now, what is lost in all of this is the awareness of the time value of money. Now, when you think about this for a minute, you know the answer to the question. You would far rather have $100 today than a year from now, because if $100 is going to buy for you, what shall we say? A new little sound system, a new little boom box that you can enjoy around the house, what have you, with all your music on it. You can buy it today for $100, and you can have it to enjoy all through the next year, right? Well, if it costs $100 to buy that boom box today, the chances are it’s going to cost $110 to buy it next year this time. And so when you get your $100 next year this time, you won’t be able to buy it at all, and you won’t have had it for the last year. There is value in time, folks. When time passes with no progress, when time passes with no work, when time passes with no value being returned, you’re losing every minute of every day. And it’s one of the reasons why, not the only, but one of the reasons why so many people are poor. And the fact is that if you’re going to borrow $100 or if you’re going to lend $100 to someone… and you wanted to pay it back in a year, you really haven’t gained anything if they pay you back at the rate of inflation. Inflation is, let’s say, 4%. A year from now, they give you $104. You haven’t gained anything because you can’t buy any more with your money a year from now than you could today. And so the value of your money is more than inflation in that sense of the word. There is a time value of money even if inflation doesn’t work, if there is no change in inflation. If $100 today, what it buys today, it will buy a year from now, you still want the money today because you can have the use of those things for one year when you otherwise would not have them. Now let’s go back to our chap who buried his talent in the earth. God then says of him, take the talent from him. and give it to him that has ten talents. For everyone that has, to him shall be given, and he’ll have abundance. From him that has not shall be taken away even what he’s got. Now hold it. That’s not fair. The guy already has got ten talents. This poor guy has got none. Why would you take from the poor fellow who has one and give it to the man who has ten? That’s not fair. But wait a minute. Did you remember whose money this is? The money didn’t belong to the men. It belonged to the great Lord who put it in their trust to invest. It didn’t belong to them. They were stewards. Now, to put yourself in the Lord’s position, suppose you have money invested with three financial counselors. Two of them double your money, while the other one only gives you back what you invested with him, no profit at all. You had $100,000 with one guy. You had a half a million with another fellow. And you only invested, let’s say, $20,000 with this one guy. Two of them doubled the money. This third fellow produced nothing. Now, when the time comes to redistribute your money among investment counselors, where are you going to place your investments? Well, if you don’t place your investments with the most capable, the most active, and the most productive of your investment advisors, you’ve got rocks in your head. You would move your money away from a failing investment advisor every time. And if I read this parable right, so will God. So what can you learn from this? Well, the clear lesson is there is a time value in everything you do. Do it now. And there’s one more important lesson. Listen to what he says of this man. And cast you, the unprofitable servant, into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now, think about this for a moment and tell me this. How much worse off would this fellow have been If he had taken his Lord’s money, taken it to an investor, had it invested, and lost every dime of it, how much worse could it have been? He got fired anyway. He’d have got fired if he lost it. He’s in outer darkness anyway, and there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth out there. That sounds awful. I mean, how much worse can it get? And here lies the other lesson. If you sit on your hands, if you don’t redeem the time, if you don’t buy back the time, if you don’t use the time, if you don’t consider the time value in everything you do, you’re a loser. You might as well stick your neck out. You might as well get out there and take some chances. You might as well get out there and go for it, because if you don’t go for it, you’re a loser. If you go for it, you might be a winner. This poor guy, oddly enough… If he had actually tried and lost it, he might have been in better shape. God might have looked upon him even more favorably than he did because at least he tried. He could have lost no more by trying. It’s one of the great lessons of life, folks. People who don’t take risks go nowhere. Take no chances. You are a sure loser. Only when you stick your neck out do you have any chance of winning at all. So get on with it. Get off your backside. Go do something. Even if it’s wrong, if it’s wrong, you can learn and you can grow. So we see from these parables that there is work to do and that there are consequences involved with not doing it. But what kind of work is it? You know, this is a parable. It’s something to be compared with other things because I don’t think God really thinks money is all that important. What kind of work is it? What actually should we do? And that takes us to the third parable in this series. In verse 31, Jesus says this, When the Son of Man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he shall sit upon the throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate them the one from another like a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, he’ll put the goats on his left. There’s an image, isn’t it? God is going to come back. And he’s going to make a separation between people down here. And it’s people he’s talking about. Make no mistake about that. And some of them he calls sheep. Some of them he calls goats. And he sets the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. They’re all divided up. Then the king says to them on his right hand, Come ye blessed of my father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Now, this is the group we want to be in, right? We’re all agreed on that. These are the winners. This is the gang that have done the right thing or been in the right place or responded. Whatever it is, they’ve got it right. These are the winners. How do you get there? Well, let’s understand one thing first. We all know that we are saved by grace through faith. It is not a matter of works. We can’t achieve our own salvation. We can’t rescue ourselves. We can’t put our past life right. We can’t get rid of all that past guilt by ourselves. That’s got to be done by the grace of God. But having had that happen in our lives, are we now free to sit on our backside and do nothing? Are we now free to bury the talent in the ground and do nothing with it, just dig it up later and give it back to God? If we ourselves are like that little bit of an investment, Stuck down, buried in the ground, put away somewhere. What shall we do? Go live in a cave and stare out with beady eyes from the back of the cave into the world going on outside? Is that what we are allowed to do? It does not seem to be so. We are saved through grace. But look, we still have this parable to deal with. He said, And I would presume from this, that he’s going to tell us that there’s a reason why we are going to inherit the kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world.
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I’ll tell you what that is when I come back. and tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you gave me something to wear. I was sick, And you came and visited me? I was in prison, and you came to me. Now, isn’t that interesting? That the kingdom is prepared from the foundation of the world for you, and you are to come and inherit the kingdom because… You gave him food and drink and clothing, and you took him in, and when he was in prison, you went to him. And the righteous, their response to this is going to be, he says, about like mine is at this point. He says, Lord, when did we see you hungry or fed you or thirsty and gave you drink? When did we see you at all? Those of us in the 20th century, we haven’t laid eyes on Jesus at least. That’s what we think. When did we do this, he said? When did we see you a stranger and take you in or naked and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison? When did we come to you? We don’t know what you’re talking about, Lord. And the king will answer and say to them, I’m going to tell you the truth. Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you have done it to me. Now, there are at least a couple of things to get out of this. One of them is that You actually have to do something. And the something we’ve got to do is pretty straightforward. It’s physical. It’s actually giving food and drink. And secondly, it is that in doing this thing to the least of Jesus’ brethren, we’re doing it to him. There was a time when Jesus made this statement. He said, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples. And then you can fill in the blank. I really think if people didn’t already know better, and you took this around to a lot of Christian people, and you ask them, how would people know that you really are a disciple of Jesus? And you might get this doctrine or that doctrine or this requirement or that requirement. Who knows what they would tell you? But Jesus said, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. Now, what are you to make of that? If you love one another, does that mean that if we just feel good about one another, if we just kind of have an affection for one another, is that what he’s talking about? Because truth to tell, there are some people out there that probably in whom Jesus dwells that some of us don’t feel all that kind of affection toward. You know, I’m really indebted to Dr. Laura Schlesinger. I listened to her for once in a while on her call-in talk show. She told me something in clear words one day that I knew, but I needed to be told. She said in bald terms, love is not a feeling. It is a behavior. It isn’t necessarily a question of how you feel. It’s a question of what you do. It’s a matter of how you treat people. That’s love. And if that’s the case, then what that means is I can choose to love an unlovable child. I can choose to love a person who is really not very lovable. How do I do that? I do it by doing the right things where this person is concerned. If he’s hungry, I give him something to eat. If he’s on the street, I give him a place to stay. If he doesn’t have any clothes and he’s cold, I give him parka. Do you realize that all those are acts of love and they have absolutely nothing to do with the way you feel? We’re a generation that seems our theme song is feelings. Oh, whoa, whoa, feelings. That’s the whole thing. Well, I don’t know about you. But I can’t always control that. I can’t always decide to feel good about somebody. I can’t always decide to feel kindly affection toward this person or that person. But what I can do is, if I see that he’s hungry, I can give him something to eat. Now, none of this is spiritual in the way we normally use the word spiritual, is it? This is down-to-earth practical Christianity. This is where the rubber meets the road. Treat people right and do it now. Give them real food, real drink, real clothes. Go to them. And don’t argue about it. You want to argue? Go argue with the Lord. Then the Lord said to them on his left hand, Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Now, need I point out that this is not the group we want to be in. These are the losers. What makes the difference between these two groups? Well, I don’t know how it could be any more simple. Jesus said, depart from me, you cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Go to hell, in other words. Depart into that fire, for I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in. I was naked, you didn’t clothe me, sick and in prison, and you never came to see me. And what’s their response? Well, Lord, if we’d have seen you hungry, we would have given you something to eat. He said, He said, Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me. These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous unto life eternal. You know, there’s no end to the arguments over the theology of grace and works and law and grace. But the bottom line is that if the grace does not affect the way you live your life, if the grace does not affect the way you treat other people, it doesn’t mean a thing. You’re a loser. And, as I’ve told you before, God doesn’t intend to spend eternity with a bunch of losers. This is Ronald Dart reminding you, you were born to win.
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The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560 White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at…
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1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net
