<p>25:24&nbsp;<em>And also he that had received the one talent came and said-</em>&nbsp;The judgment of the righteous comes before that of the rejected. The faithful respond first to the news that &lsquo;He&rsquo;s back&rsquo;, and their willingness to go and be with Him is effectively their judgment. Those who delay are the unworthy and are therefore judged slightly later.</p><p><em>Lord</em>- The man considers himself one of the Lord&rsquo;s servants, within the household. He clearly felt he had been given too little to do anything much with; but actually the talent was worth around 1 million , or 20 years&rsquo; wages. He didn&rsquo;t appreciate the greatness of what he had been given.</p><p><em>I knew you</em>- In reality, he didn&rsquo;t know his Lord. For those who &lsquo;know the Lord&rsquo; will be saved, and it is the unbelieving world who do not know Him (s.w. Jn. 17:3,25). Because that isn&rsquo;t at all how the Lord is (hard, unreasonable, etc.). But the Lord doesn&rsquo;t correct the false understanding, thereby justifying Himself. Rather does He as so often reason with the man upon the basis of the man&rsquo;s professed belief system. We see this so often in the Lord&rsquo;s teaching style, and in the way the Gospels use the language of demons. Error is not baldly exposed and corrected, rather are those who believe it worked with according to their understandings, and gently brought to a realization that those views are unhelpful and not the correct reality. The focus, therefore, was upon people, upon the persons holding the ideas, rather than the error of the ideas in themselves. And this has much to teach us; for so many Protestant groups have become obsessed with exposing intellectual error for its own sake; whereas our focus must be upon the individuals who hold those misbeliefs.&nbsp;</p><p><em>Are a hard man</em>- The problem was the man&rsquo;s wrong attitude and laziness to do anything. The prodigal son was given much of his Father&rsquo;s wealth, and he wasted it rather than trading it. But he recognized the Father&rsquo;s grace and was prepared to work just as a servant. And this attitude was his salvation. So this man&rsquo;s rejection wasn&rsquo;t simply because he had failed to do any trading.</p><p>Another take on this is that there is a sense in which the Lord is indeed a &ldquo;hard man&rdquo;, a demanding Lord, His expectations were (and are) high. And yet His parables reveal an immense sympathy and empathy with our weakness. In a normal human situation, it would be difficult to build a relationship with someone who had such apparently contradictory trends in His character. Perhaps we have the same problem in our struggle to know the Lord. He never denied that He came over in some ways as &quot;a hard man&quot; with high expectations; all He said was that seeing this was the case, we ought to act accordingly (Mt. 25:24). And yet He is also a man of grace and understanding far beyond anything reached by anyone else. He is truly the Jesus who understands human weakness. And note that He is described even now as &ldquo;the man Christ Jesus&rdquo;, able to feel the pulse of our humanity. This, in passing, opens a window into what Divine nature will be like: we will be able to completely feel the human experience, to the extent of still bearing the title &lsquo;men&rsquo; even in immortality.</p><p><em>Reaping where you did not sow-&nbsp;</em>The moment of conversion is the beginning of the gathering to judgment (Lk. 11:23; Jn. 4:36). The one talent man didn't appreciate this; he objected to the Lord reaping and gathering him (Mt. 25:24). But whatever human objections, the responsible from all nations&nbsp;<em>will be gathered&nbsp;</em>to judgment (Mt. 25:32). The servants are called to receive their talents, and then called again to account (Lk. 19;13,15); there is something in common between the calling to know the Gospel, and the calling to judgment. If reaping refers to judgment which it clearly does in the Lord&rsquo;s teaching, then the man could hardly claim to have known the Lord on the basis of how He reaps. Because the man hadn&rsquo;t experienced the Lord&rsquo;s reaping. The man says he &lsquo;knows&rsquo; <em>ginosko</em> the Lord is like this; the Lord answers that if indeed the man has &lsquo;known&rsquo; <em>eido</em>- which more means to see / experience that He is like this, then he should have acted accordingly. The suggestion may be that even if a person&rsquo;s understanding of the Lord Jesus is slightly wrong, the important thing is to live within and according to that understanding, even if it involves breaking some Divine principles lending for interest. If the desire to respond to the Lord&rsquo;s gift was there, the desire to progress His work, then although such response was not ideal and not as good as that achieved by the other two servants, then the Lord would accept it. The language of sowing, reaping and gathering is all described using the same Greek words in the Lord&rsquo;s comment that the birds don&rsquo;t do these three things, and yet God still feeds them (Mt. 6:26). Perhaps the man was making a garbled, incoherent attempt to say that he had understood those words of the Lord to mean that He was somehow going to be an unreasonable judge with unreal expectations, therefore he had done nothing, although he had not spent the talent unlike the prodigal son- who desperately wanted to be with the Father. We may be intended to understand his reasoning as being &lsquo;You created birds who don&rsquo;t sow, reap nor gather into barns, they just expect food. And God thinks that&rsquo;s good. So, He is like what He creates&rsquo;. And perhaps the man also had in view Jn. 4:38: &ldquo;I sent you to reap that whereon you bestowed no labour. Other men laboured&hellip;&rdquo;. The harvest of people was reaped by those who hadn&rsquo;t fully worked for it, and the man desperately tries to turn that around to justify his own lack of action. Such desperate twisting of Bible verses can be seen at every hand today, as people wriggle by all means to justify their inaction and selfishness.</p><p><em>And gathering where you did not scatter seed</em>- The Lord is clearly the sower of seed, the seed of the word of the Kingdom (13:3). But the man is complaining that the Lord &lsquo;reaps&rsquo; or calls to judgment those who had not received that seed. That is not the case- for knowledge of the Gospel is what makes responsible to judgment. The Lord could have corrected him by reminding him of the sower parable. But He doesn&rsquo;t. He reasons with the man according to the belief system which he claims to have, assuming for a moment that it is in fact true. His whole style ought to be programmatic for us in our frequent encounters with those who misuse Scripture and the Lord&rsquo;s words. The Lord does&nbsp;<em>not&nbsp;</em>expect a harvest from ground He has not sown; and in any case, the man had heard the word, received the talent. He was ground which had been sown, and the Lord could therefore expect a harvest from him. Like many people today, he started to raise philosophical questions about the fate of those who have not heard, and justified his own inaction as one who definitely&nbsp;<em>had</em>&nbsp;heard and been called on the basis of his doubts as to the Lord&rsquo;s justice in dealing with those who had&nbsp;<em>not</em>&nbsp;been called. Truly these ancient teachings speak to the heart of postmodern man today.</p><p>&quot;Gathering&quot; was highly relevant to the man, for the language of &lsquo;gathering&rsquo; is often used about the gathering of God&rsquo;s servants to judgment (3:12; 13:30; 25:32). The man was implying that his &lsquo;gathering&rsquo; to judgment was unreasonable because the Lord had not sown in his land, had not strawed where he has. He felt he was being gathered to give an account when the Lord had given him nothing to account for. And yet the obvious fact was, the elephant in the room, that the Lord had given him a talent, 20 years&rsquo; wages, 1 million. And yet the man reasoned as if he had not been given anything to account for. He totally refused to perceive the immense value of what he had been given. And this is so true for us- we for whom Christ died, the blood of God&rsquo;s Son shed, we who have been called to eternity, who by status are &ldquo;saved&rdquo; and showered with all spiritual blessings&hellip; can complain that we have not been given anything. Because in our minds we have buried it away, and reason as if we never received it. Here again, the Lord&rsquo;s ancient words pierce to the core of modern Christian self-perception.</p><p>The Greek&nbsp;<em>diaskorpizo</em>&nbsp;can mean &lsquo;to scatter&rsquo; and can therefore be used about sowing; but it also has the specific meaning &lsquo;to winnow&rsquo;. In this case, the picture would be of a man who has not winnowed and yet expects to come and gather up wheat. Again, the man may be attempting to twist the Lord&rsquo;s words about &lsquo;gathering wheat into His barn&rsquo; (13:30, repeating John&rsquo;s words of 3:12). His idea would be &lsquo;You expect the wheat to be waiting for You without even winnowing it&rsquo;. But of course the point was that winnowing represented judgment, and this was exactly what the Lord had come to do. But in His grace, the Lord doesn&rsquo;t make that obvious point, but runs with the man&rsquo;s words and reasoning and shows him that however wrong his imaginations were about the Lord, he should have acted according to them if he truly loved his Lord. But he hadn&rsquo;t done so; because he was selfish and lazy.</p>